About the Survival Guide
The Young People's Survival Guide for Oxfordshire is produced by Oxfordshire County Council Integrated Youth Support Service.
It is aimed at young people starting Year 11. It was originally a small book, designed to be an easy way to carry around essential information in a school bag or pocket.
When young people began to have easy, private access to a home computer, we took the Survival Guide online. It is updated every year, and you are currently reading the Survival Guide for 2010-11.
This year, the Survival Guide is only available online.
History of the Survival Guide
The Survival Guide has been distributed in Oxfordshire since 1996. Many, many young people have been involved in its development, as well as professionals, writers, local organisations and many others.
Each year we have asked for input from young people in Oxfordshire, with the aim of making the Guide better and more useful. Recent improvements have included:
- Replacing general pictures with pictures of real young people from Oxfordshire
- Updating and improving illustrations
- Using the Connexions library colours to indicate topics
- Including personal testimonies, including poems
- Including videos
If you'd like to be involved in helping to make next year's Survival Guide better, please get in touch.
A place to get information - online
The Young People's Survival Guide for Oxfordshire is packed with links, helplines, videos, exercises, quizzes and organisations which can help you sort out issues, access opportunities, and generally get on with your life.
So, once you've had a look through the Survival Guide, bookmark it or write down one of our web addresses:
Using the Online Survival Guide:
The Online Survival Guide provides information materials about topics of interest to young people. The information included reflects information requested and suggested by local young people; local targets around information and youth; search terms used by our visitors; questions sent in to the website; and any other input we can find to make this information more useful and relevant to Oxfordshire's young people.
- The pages are listed under seven broad topics, free time, relationships, health, education, training and work, money, law (including rights) and housing
- There is also a Help Directory which contains links to lots of helplines and other sources of advice for young people
- Each page contains general information, some useful links and key local contacts
- If you're having problems finding the information you want, try searching, check the Frequently Asked Questions or look at the Full List of topics.
- If you still can't find the information you need, you can email a youth information worker.
The Online Survival Guide is updated with new information throughout the year. Information pages are checked through yearly. However because the internet is a dynamic environment, information and links may be out of date. Please note that Spired.com is not responsible for the content of other websites.
Who Produced this?
The Survival Guide is key content on the Oxfordshire County Council Integrated Youth Support Services website, Spired.com. Information on this site is aimed at young people aged 13-19 living in (or about to move to) Oxfordshire, in the UK, or up to age 25 if there are special circumstances.
The web editor is Jeremy Day, and the information worker is Karin Cook.
You can contact us on the email addresses above, or by mail to:
Supporting Choices
Oxfordshire County Council Integrated Youth Support Services
County Hall Third Floor
New Road
Oxford OX1 1ND
