Your voice 16+

The Wiltshire Centre for Independent living (Wiltshire CIL) has set up a new initiative called the Pioneers. This network of disabled and older people have been sharing their views and expertise to help improve services in Wiltshire, including creating some video guides about their steps to independence. You can find their contributions across a number of the information pages on the Local Offer website:

• Independence
• Travel
• Managing money
• Somewhere to live

You can also find more information and videos about the Young Pioneers on the Getting involved page.

Watch: Lewis talks about being a young pioneer

The Wiltshire Local Offer was pleased to be invited to attend the All Inclusive Road Show event. It was great to meet new people and share what the Local Offer can help them with and what we need to improve. Hopefully those who engaged with us will keep an eye on our Getting involved page to find future events. Read on to hear some words from the organisers:

Information from services where everyone is welcome

A massive thank you to Knightwood Leisure Ltd for hosting the event at Brown Street and for providing an endless supply of refreshments during the day. Another big thank you to our then Mayor, Councillor Tom Corbin for opening the event and for spending most of the day with us chatting to visitors and stall holders, playing games and enjoying a cake or two! Some amazing feedback:

very interesting with a welcoming and informal atmosphere - it proved to be a good networking opportunity for our charity and we would be very happy to participate again. It really was a well-organised, and welcoming event, and one that we were very proud to be part of. Brilliant...loved the cakes.

Both Kez and I are very proud to have been able to offer this event to Salisbury Residents.  The above quotes from thank you messages really say it all for us.  We had 42 people involved in showcasing what their organisations have to offer and over 40 visitors.  Our visitors enjoyed games with Salisbury U3A, crafting with Lorraine and amazing cakes and savoury baked items made by students at Exeter House School. We had beautiful singing from Lilli Baddock.

Exeter House poster competition for the All Inclusive Roadshow

The Salisbury Area Board Carers Champion and Disability Action Group Salisbury received permission from the Head at Exeter House School to invite the students to design a poster for them advertising the All Inclusive Showcase event being held in Salisbury on 9 May.

They provided the school with some logos, the date, time and venue and wanted the competition to provide a piece of work that would be able to be made into a poster/leaflet advertising the event.

Helen Dowse - Carers Champion, Kez Adey - Disability Campaigner and Anne Trevett - Chair of Safer and Supportive Salisbury were invited to the Exeter House Vocational Centre to judge the winning design.

They visited three slightly different age groups where all the students showed us their posters.

We were truly blown away by all the fabulous pictures saw.  It was very hard to choose a winner!

The winner was presented with a prize by Helen Dowse and all the students also received a small gift in appreciation of their participation.

Here is a picture of the judges with the entries.

All inclusive roadshow picture competition

Poster competition entries with the competition organisers

Image Gallery

Wiltshire Together

The digital platform that connects people, groups and organisations in Wiltshire to their community. You can list support, volunteering, groups and relevant events.

Wiltshire Together 

Our Community Matters

Local interactive notice boards which everyone can use to highlight and discuss local news events and ideas.

Our Community Matters 

Advocacy - Someone on your side

You have as much right as an adult to be listened to when decisions are being made about your life. What you feel and want is very important.

What an advocate does:

• listens to you
• explains information
• finds out your wishes and feeling
• helps you tell others what you want or tells them for you, if you want the advocate to do this
• gets answers to your questions
• won't tell you what to do
• is independent which means they won't make any decisions about or for you

For more information on the advocacy service for Wiltshire please visit their website:

Young Person's Advocacy

Ways to have a voice in changing and improving services in Wiltshire

There are many people you can talk to and organisations that can help you take part in shaping services to suit your needs. There is a page you can visit dedicated to this:

Getting involved

This includes organisations like Wiltshire Parent Carer Council, Wiltshire Centre for Independent Living and Healthwatch Wiltshire.

Wiltshire Council is dedicated to using consultation and co-creation to produce a people-centred approach to make progress. To find out where Wiltshire SEND community members have been agents of change please read our continually updated summary.

For more information visit:

You Said, We Did