My name is Chris Bush.

Where are you from?

I’m from Birmingham City Council and I’m the chair of the Transition Information Network reference group.

Are you enjoying this event?

Very much indeed!

What do you think disabled young people need in order to have a better transition to adulthood?

I think teachers and social workers should work together and listen to the young people to actually try to plan what it is the young people say they want to do. Knowing what young people want to do and helping them plan for that, is what I want to see where I work.

Anything else you would like to say?

I’m just having a great time and thank you very much for interviewing me.

My name is Dave Dickinson.

Where are you from?

I’m from the National Strategies and my job is to lead the team in the National Strategies that deals with the Transition Support Programme.

Are you enjoying this event?

Fantastic – it’s a real opportunity, not just to meet with the people who have been involved with the Transition Support Programme but a very wide group of people, and young people importantly because we should be designing everything around what young people need and want.

This is a fantastic setting to reinforce how important our messages about transition are. One of the things that occurred to me when we were here was that we should be encouraging young people to be a national representative and be in parliament.

What do you think disabled young people need to have a better transition to adulthood?

I think there are two things that are very important. One is that all transition is person centred, in other words, it starts with the young person and what they want now and in the future. And the second things is, all the big human beings working together to make sure that the littler human beings get the opportunity to get the best out of life.

Robert Buckland

Where are you from?

I’m from South Wales originally but I’m now the MP for South Swindon.

Are you enjoying this event?

Oh very much so, it’s really lovely to be hosting it and to bring everybody together to talk about issues that we’re all very passionate about.

What do you think would help disabled young people?

I think the first step is to listen to disabled young people and let them lead the way. Instead of people like me saying ‘well we know what you want’ we should be asking you ‘what do you want?’ and then building a service from there?

Anything else you’d like to say?

I’d just like to say thank you to everybody for coming along and making this event a success. I think we’re celebrating the positive aspects of transition today but we’re also highlighting some of the problems that a lot of our disabled young people face  and we all understand that we need to work together to overcome them so that transition is a pathway to a happy life, rather than an obstacle to be overcome.