CP-Voice Advisory Group

Calling young people with CP - CP-Achieve needs your help! 

Are you a young person with cerebral palsy, aged 10 to 18 years? Make a difference! Join an Advisory Group of other young people and add your voice to CP research.

You can make your voice count by telling us what’s important to you.

We will support you to be involved in a way that works for you. You will have time to prepare for meetings and a mentor will be available to support you to have your say.

Click here to express your interest or keep reading to find out more.

What is the Advisory Group for?

We want to hear what’s important to you and other young people with CP!

The Adolescent Advisory Group is here for you to share your advice and expertise. This way we can make sure our research is the best it can be for young people with CP. 

You do not need to know anything about research. It is your knowledge about being a young person with CP that is important to us! 

How will I get ready to join the Advisory Group?

Before you start, you will attend an information session to help you get prepared.

This session will tell you more about the Advisory Group and prepare you for your role within it.

Here you will get to know each other, and you can ask any questions you have. We will work with you to make sure that you have whatever support you need to be involved.

What happens when I join the Advisory Group?

We would like to meet with you every one to two months. You may come to as many or as few sessions as you like. Each session will be a maximum of 2 hours with breaks. These meetings are to find out your views!

You might want to meet one-on-one with a researcher rather than join the Advisory Group – this is your choice.

Before meetings, we will send you information about what we will talk about in the meetings. This is so that you have time to prepare and think about your views.

You could also choose to work with a mentor to help you prepare for these meetings. The mentor will be a young person (17 years old or older). They may be health students or siblings of people with disabilities.

The mentor’s roles is to support you to be confident and comfortable when giving your views. They can help you go through the prep material and think about how to express your own opinions to the group.

In the meetings we will...

Introduce you to the research team. 

Tell you more about the research CP Achieve does. 

Talk about your role, rights, and responsibilities. 

Make sure you are comfortable to say what you want to say, and that you can ask for information or help if you need it. 

Ask you to help us make important decisions about the research we are doing. This is so the research can best benefit young people with cerebral palsy. We will ask questions like: 

• What are young people with CP wanting to achieve? What makes it harder or easier for you to achieve your goals?  
• How does your physical health make it harder for you to live your life the way you want to? This will help us to look for better treatments. 
• How does CP affect your mental health? The answers will help us find ways to support young people with CP to have good mental health. 
• What would help you transition into adulthood? This will help us design supportive programs. 
• How can we find young people with CP to take part in research? What are the best ways of speaking with them? 

Only young people with CP can answer these questions! 

How will we support you?

We will find out the best ways to communicate with you, and make sure you have the support you need to have your say.

Mentors are also available to support you to be confident and comfortable when giving your views.

We will have someone you can contact to help work out any questions or problems.

What are the benefits to you?

Mostly you will be helping us! Your help will benefit the research team and young people with CP in the future. 

You will be paid for your involvement and get a letter for your resumé. 

Young people who are on research advisory groups say they enjoy: 

• Learning new information and developing new skills 
• Getting to share their experience 
• Knowing they are helping others 
• Contributing to important research  
• Working on the best ways to offer therapies and services 
• Getting to know researchers, therapists, and other people 
• Learning more about research  

Yes, I’m in! What do I need to do?

Click here to express your interest in being involved and leave your contact details. We will get back to you with details of the orientation session.

If you have any questions now, contact cp-achieve@mcri.edu.au and we will get back to you as soon as we can.