Over the last few weeks we've received lots of support from members of the public for the idea of a youth disability advocacy service in Queensland. Nevertheless, it has become clearer that we have a lot of work to do before we can make this service a reality.

Here's an update on what we've been up to:

• Heather Stewart (heather at yanq.org.au) joined the YANQ team yesterday on a short term student placement and has asked to help out with this campaign. Well of course we said “YES!” and have asked Heather to help out by keeping all the supporters more up to date with the campaign. Heather will be in touch with supporters of this campaign next week with the first of many suggestions for how you can help. Heather is in the final year of studying Politics, Asian Studies and International Relations at Griffith University.

• Caroline has been contacting youth disability services, organisations and clubs seeking opportunities to come and talk directly to young people with disabilities. This is very important. We've had some great advice from a small group of young people so far, but they could use some help and the more the merrier. If you can help us make contact with young people with disabilities, please contact Caroline (email ydaq2 at yanq.org.au or phone 3844 7713 on Monday or Tuesday).

• Caroline has also been working with one of our young supporters (James) and documenting his story. We will publish this on the site next week. James has been a great help explaining to us how a youth disability advocacy service could have helped him get equal access education and employment. Another of our young supporters has also written to us with his views on why a youth disability advocacy service is needed and we will publish this on the site shortly as well. We will need more stories and case studies, and Caroline (if she hasn't already) will be in touch asking for your help with this. Feel free to write some stories or case-studies yourself and send them in. You'll see some examples already on our site (about housing, education and work).

• Bob wrote letters to all the major parties contesting the State election and provided them with a fairly detailed proposal. Siyavash (YANQ's Director) also met with the (current) Premier's staff to discuss the proposal. Both parties responded, but neither offered any specific support (see the partys' responses to our open letter here).

• David has updated the website for the campaign – see www.yanq.org.au/ydaq. Over the next few weeks we want to keep adding more stories from young people that explain how a youth disability service would help (Caroline is working on a couple right now – see below).

• Heather has set up a group on Facebook for the campaign. Those of you on Facebook can use this group to connect with each other and share ideas.

So as you can see, things are gearing up. Our main focus over the next few weeks will be to keep building a strong base of supporters (and for that we'll need your help) and to put some more detail around the proposal (getting evidence from research literature, developing a budget etc). As we mentioned above, Heather will be in touch later next week with the first of many suggestions of how you can help – we hope you'll be able to spare a few minutes and please don't hesitate to send us your ideas for how we can spread the word about this campaign.

You can contact Caroline (ydaq2 at yanq.org.au), Bob (ydaq1 at yanq.org.au) or Heather (heather at yanq.org.au) or leave a message for any of them to call you back on 07 3844 7713.