Youth Plus membership guidelines.

Youth Plus is a parents run group that is run equally by all parents. This defines our affiliation to Mencap, which enables us to be insured as a group.

Our affiliation has been approved according to the terms of our membership which are set out below.

It is important that the terms of membership are adhered to and the continuing membership of a young person to Youth Plus is determined by this.

The terms are:

• Youth Plus does not run as a provision. i.e.: It is not set up to be run by a few parents for the benefit of everyone else.
• The members of Youth Plus are the parent/parents that sign the membership form and agree to be available to support the Group.
• The young people are the junior members. A junior member is a young person who is under 18 or in receipt of DLA, even if they are over 18 years of age.
• Young people who are over 18 and do not receive DLA are volunteer members and must themselves contribute, by helping in the group.
• Youth Plus aims to empower junior members to meet their social needs, supported by their parent members.
• All parent members are required to be involved in supporting or helping with the group or with an activity, at some time during each year. [see ways to help for ideas of how to do this]
• Parent members remain responsible for their own junior members at all times while at Youth Plus or on an activity, and agree to be ‘on call’ if a junior member attends unaccompanied.
• All junior members must be signed in by a parent, Carer or Personal Assistant [PA] at every attendance at Youth Plus.
• While PAs or other paid workers are welcomed to support young people on a weekly basis at Youth Plus, they cannot take the place of the parent member in the requirement to help support the group.
• Occasionally an exception can be made for young people in Independent living. In this situation, the membership requirements of the parent can be met by a paid worker, or other designated adult, if this person is willing to sign the membership form in lieu, and to become a volunteer member of Youth Plus. They would then be required to support the whole group and contribute to its running as would be required by the parent member.
  

Memberships can only be renewed each January if the above requirements for membership are met.