This month has been incredibly exciting!

On 14 November, MYPs from all over the country came together in the House of Commons to debate the five most important issues for young people as chosen through the Make Your Mark Ballot, which was completed by over 875,000 young people.

I was lucky enough to be elected as the South West’s Debate Lead for the debate, which was chaired by the Rt Hon John Bercow MP, and I therefore had the huge privilege of speaking in favour of improving mental health services for young people at the Dispatch Box.

At the end of the five debates, all of the MYPs voted on the issues which they believed should be the new campaigns for Youth Parliament and I am thrilled to say that improving mental health services has become the new devolved campaign, with ensuring a living wage becoming the nationwide one.

As a result of my speech, I was able to share the amazing work of Youth Parliament with the BBC and ITV and have been invited to meet with the Minister for Care and Support Norman Lamb to discuss young people’s mental health.

I was so proud to represent Poole’s young people and ensure your voices are heard on a national level, and I am also so proud to be part of such a diverse, empowering Youth Parliament; with over 50% of the MYPs being female and 34% being of ethnic minority. I truly believe that if the future parliament is anything like the current Youth Parliament then the future of politics is bright!

On a local level myself and my deputy Tom have also been very active, including both being on the planning group for this year’s Annual Youth Conference at the Lighthouse.

This event was a huge success with young people from all over Poole coming together to discuss issues such as homophobic bullying and mental health.

As one of our local priorities this year is mental health, myself and Tom planned and ran a workshop at the Youth Conference for young people with the support of CAMHS looking specifically at the stigma surrounding mental health and practical ways in which we can reduce this stigma on a local and national level.

The workshop was a huge success and is therefore being transformed into a PSHE lesson to become part of a pack of five PSHE sessions the Children’s Board, of which I am a member, are creating around topics which over 800 of you told us were important; life skills, youth unemployment, discrimination, youth opportunities and mental health.

We are currently in the final stages of planning these lessons and hope that they will be available sometime in the New Year.

Furthermore, having secured funding, we are in the process of producing a coupon booklet which will be available to young people in Poole through schools, allowing you free or discounted entry to a variety of local opportunities from sports to music.

We hope to begin printing the booklets in the New Year and have them out in schools in February.

On Monday 24 November I attended Poole’s State of the Area Debate for young people, at which it was brilliant to hear young people’s views on the opportunities for them in Poole and how these can be improved.

I look forward to feeding back to decision makers at the State of Area Debate on Monday 1 December as the Youth Representative on the panel.

Finally, I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who cast their vote in the Make Your Mark Ballot.

This year we collected a record number of over 4,000 ballots, which is a 37% turnout! As a result of this ballot your voices were definitely heard on a local and national scale and your opinions are being taken seriously.

I really hope you feel we are representing you to the best of our abilities, and if you would like to get in touch with me to raise any issues you feel are important within Poole or within the country for young people or just want to keep updated you can follow me on Twitter (please feel free to message me): @FranReed28

Francesca Reed Member of Youth Parliament for Poole