Meet the team

Our Travelling with Confidence team is now up and running to deliver our new project that is designed to help people with learning disabilities travel independently.

The project centres around a new network of Travel Champions who will carry out quality checks on public transport and share their insight with local travel companies to improve accessibility for people with learning disabilities.

Lucie, Travel Coordinator

I am Lucie and I am the Travel Coordinator for the Travelling with Confidence project. I'm delivering Independent Travel Training courses to people with learning disabilities and/or autism in South Tyneside and Gateshead. We have already recruited our lovely Travel Champions team, and we will also recruit, train and coordinate a group of Travel Buddy volunteers. The team includes three Travel Champions (people with lived experience of learning disabilities) and Project Support Workers whose role is to support the Travel Champions to conduct quality checks of local transport services. I am currently attending a training course with Open Awards to prepare for delivery of the Independent Travel Training Courses.

Jodie McCarthy, Travel Champion

My job role as Travel Champion is to go on public transport and make it more accessible for people with disabilities and spread awareness. We will be carrying out quality checks on different parts of public transport.

Lee Mason, Travel Champion

My job role is to do quality checks on buses, trains, ferries and metros. We will be looking at disabled access and checking how easy information is to understand. We will suggest good changes to the transport companies.

Melissa, Travel Champion

I am one of the three Travel Champions on the team. I am very excited to be in this job role and I am looking forward to carrying out quality checks with public transport to see how accessible different modes of transport are and what can be improved about them as well. I’m also looking forward to how this work will help people gain confidence and knowledge about how to travel outside of their comfort zones and expand on how they can travel independently eventually.

Heather Fraser and Ashley Yorston, Project Support Workers

Our job is to support the Travel Champions to quality check public transport in the North East and to present our findings to travel companies to support positive changes to information and accessibility on public transport for people with learning disabilities and autistic people.

(Photos left to right: Lucie, Melissa, Jodie, Lee, Ashley and Heather)

Travelling with Confidence is funded by the Motability Foundation and is a partnership of six local charities, led by Your Voice Counts working in conjunction with Adapt North East, Bridge Creative, Darlington Association on Disability, People First and Skills for People. Look out for updates as the project progresses.