Opportunities are essential to involve your self in a sport and if you don’t have them it will become a problem. For example if you live in a place where you don’t have a sports facility it might be too expensive to get to the place or it might reduce the motivation of the athlete. Maybe no availability of coaches around the area, e.g. if you are an elite tennis player and you don’t have a coach in the area you might start losing your skills or might have to travel everyday to get to the place.
Disabled people are one of the most target groups that have barriers, this is due to the specific equipment needed. Barriers we can find are; not a proper access into the gym, or swimming pool, not organised disable teams to play at, such as wheelchair basketball or tennis, etc. These barriers can easily be taken off, by putting some effort on finding coaches to take and motivate disabled people, having inspectors attending gyms often, so there is no possibility of a disabled person to be discriminated, etc.
Education is a very important barrier that starts from the foundation stage of sports. For example having a low knowledge about the ethics and values of sports will make a person not know about the sportsmanship, respect, etc. Also if they had bad relation with PE teachers will make the athletes unmotivated to involve their selves in sport in a future time.
Women are gradually increasing their participation in every kind of sport. This is a very good statistic to read about, as women weren’t used to participate in sport as much and definitely not in a contact sport such as rugby. But now a day this have all changed. They still have their own barriers such as while being in the tennis court people will be looking at the ball AND woman, which ends up as a model to men view. Horse riding is the only sport in which men and woman participate together in the Olympics, this is point which has to be considered as men and women are able to work together, each person at their own level, skill and techniques.
Ethnic minorities have always been a problem, not only in sports but in the normal routine of life. Being a different type of race does not mean they have to have more barriers to participation, such as lack of confidence, discrimination, etc. This will gradually decrease by putting different race coaches, more media, giving the proper ethics and values from the foundation section in the “sports development continuum”, etc.
The term of concepts of inclusivity it’s a term we should all focus on, it means that everyone should have a chance to include them selves in the sport they want to play at, no matter the level, no matter the “barriers”, a disable person should no have a problem to join in into a athletics club if that’s what he/she wants.
Then we have provision and enabling. Provision is when a sport club I provided with coaches, equipment, facilities, etc. this might be given by Sports England or sports development office in the borough and then enabling is when the sport club or office is giving you the information on where to get the provisions needed, such as equipment, coaches, to allow running the new sports club successfully.
(P1)
Now I’m going to talk about Charnwood Sports Development Unit in increasing participation levels for four target groups.
Charnwood Sports Development team consists of recreational services team, sports development officers which will develop opportunities to deal with the issues of crimes, social exclusions, health inequalities and education. Leisure development officers are also in the team and their roles are to improve the health and well being of local people, increase the participation in sports and leisure in the areas of Charnwood Borough and finally give equal participation in sports and leisure by making sure; prices, transports, disabilities, etc are not barriers to participation.
These are some of the key areas of Charnwood:
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Work with schools: Make sure every student have access to a sport and that no problem or situation is stopping that person to take part in sports.
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Work with Sports Clubs & develop sports facilities: Means get more qualified coaches, develop more clubs, make sure people attend and can attend to the club, and not barriers can stop them, such as; transport, money, etc.
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Work with key organizations: such as Loughborough University, Burleigh College and Loughborough College
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Youth Games: By this, young people will be able to enter the sports society by playing games at events, etc.
The four target groups that the Sport Development team has worked with in the borough of Charnwood are:
- Young people
- Disabled people
- People aged 50 and over
- Economic status
Young People:
The action Charnwood did to make young people participate in sports was and still is introducing “Active Sports”, this is funded by Sport England Lottery Fund, targeting ten sports, such as; athletics, rugby, football, girls football, etc. Their aim is to improve young people to increase their level of participation and get better at their sporting skills, giving schools, communities and World Class programmes. They also have activities during school holidays.
Their successes are:
- Over 5000 people got involved in Sports Activity over the last 12 months.
- Over 700 qualified coaches through Coach Step Programme
Disabled People:
The Sports Development Officer of Charnwood is a disabled him self, he is played wheelchair basketball in a high level and compete for GB in other sports. Therefore sports development team has a lot of more potential to go on for disabled people, such
as getting more coaches to train disabled athletes, make more teams for people to join in, make more events and finally make sure they are treated as athletes.
Their successes are:
- Increased memberships
- Brought more people to disable sports
People aged 50 and over:
Charnwood also treats people over 50 very well. They include a rehabilitation scheme called Hear Smart, which is mainly for people ho are recovering from heart disease or heart surgeries. It’s aim is to enable those people who have had lack of movement for a long period of time, to enable them to “independently” exercise them selves to keep as healthy as possible. Charnwood gives the area for this to happen and a very low rate of fees to be paid.
Their successes are:
- Increased amount of members
- Increase the early age of heart disease problems
Economic Status:
Charnwood also takes in mind the economic level of each target group and try and solve this by doing projects. They do projects in Deprived Areas such as events, building new facilities, they also make prices a lot lower so every kind of level can pay for the fees, they sponsor people or a community to pay for equipments, transport, etc.
Their successes are:
- Brand new sport & leisure facilities built
- Gave support to 30 clubs so they can develop.
(P2)
Now I’m going to compare the successes between the target groups.
For the target groups we have:
- Young People
- Disabled People
- People over 50’s and over
- Economic Status
All of these four target groups earn their own success over a certain period of time. These successes made more money to the community, made people happier, etc. Therefore I’m going to compare the successes between the target groups to see the differences between them and why those successes.
First we have the young target group, this is the major target group as younger people are more energetic, they have more abilities and skills to show, they learn easier, they want to be as their role models, etc.
The success they had in the period of one year is incredibly massive; over 700 students became coaches through Coach Step Programme, this shows us that 700 hundred students are educated in sports, that their future will be surrounded by sport and that 700 hundred people gave money into the Sports Society to make sure they have the proper equipment, coaches that qualify learners and to get qualified as a coach.
Also over 5000 people got involved in Sports Activity in that same period of time and at least half of the people were children that will start learning skills or maybe people who became a sport person because it started to enjoy it.
Comparing this, to the success of disabled people will make the disabled successes seem really small, but we have to take in count, that they are not as many disabled people in the communities as children, they are not as many disabled people who will be motivated enough to go to a gym and work out, etc. But this target group also have its own successes, for example a lot of Leisure Centres has increased the numbers of memberships as Leisure centres are getting the concept of inclusivity so disabled people can actually work out in the same gym as people without disabilities do. Also another success of Charnwood Borough for the disabled target group is that a lot of people got motivated to start attending to friendly games, such as wheelchair tennis and wheelchair basketball at Loughborough University facilities.
Another comparison I’m going to do is between people ages 50 or above and the people with low income.
These two groups also have big successes that should make the Sports Development group very proud of them selves. For example one of the successes for the over 50’s group is that they increased the number of memberships which means a lot of people around that age are getting motivated to join a gym, because of the media or special arrangements done. Also one success we can see is that the casualties of heart disease problems have decrease in amount, which means people are being healthier and exercise them selves more.
Comparing these successes between poorer areas of the community are more money wise help than actually helping the people get in the sports, for example the Charnwood Borough open brand new sport and leisure facilities all over those areas and gave support to 30 clubs so they can develop and get better equipment in the gyms, etc.
Now comparing young people and people aged 50’s between disables and low income communities will give us an idea about the similarities and type of help these 4 groups need.
For example we said for young people that the successes were that a lot of new children got them selves into sport surrounding and actually learned about sports by Coach Step Programme, this gives an idea that as soon as we introduce the people to the sports the better they will get at and the more educated will get, this successes reminds me of the motivation the disabled and Over 50’s group need.
The over 50’s group will need the motivation to bring them out of the house and actually get them into a leisure centre to do the exercises. The adult memberships had increase therefore those motivation skills are working through out the community. And finally we have the children, women and over 50’s groups in deprived areas, I think this target group is one of the areas which benefit more from money wise, as facilities are very old, not a lot of equipment, etc. therefore this target area is similar to the others, as the successes for it are that new sport clubs are being built and gave support to more than 30 clubs to develop. (M1)
Provide recommendations and a rationale for future activities on the target groups described.
First we have the Young People target group, as we said this target group has its own barriers that will stop children get in sports, barriers such as lack of money for equipment, lack of transportation to the sports club and maybe as being neglected from its friends he/she will not be confident enough to participate in the sport. Therefore I think the possible recommendations e could make could be, for the money wise problem, they could get apply for a job or if they’re too young they could ask the sports club to lend them the sports needed while they are signed up in the sports club. For the transportation problem, what it could be done is that the sports club could have a leisure centre bus shuttle which will go around these specific communities and finally being neglected by its own friends could make a kid very unconfident so for this not to happen they could mix the teams more often so they can be checked by the coach in every moment of the session.
Secondly we have the disabled group and of course they also have barriers that should be taken in account, for example one of the possible barriers is that they don’t have the same facilities as non disable people which make the disabled discriminated, the solution for this is that an inspector should attend every single sports facility to make sure they have the concept of inclusibity in their mind and their facilities.
In addition we have the over 50’s target group this is a group that as time passes they have less and less barriers in the sports centres, but they are still some barriers to participation. For example, some sports centres will not have special sessions for adult people, which might make an aerobic training session very embarrassing for the over 50 people, as they can see they are weaker, and slower than the rest of the people, so for this not to happen, special sessions should be arrange by the sports centre so they can feel comfortable and be motivated.
Also transport should be arrange, as old people like in their 60’s or 70’s will not be able to drive a car and will stop being able to attend to the gym, so special coaches or vans should be put by the leisure centre to go to specific areas and pick up the people.
Finally we have the low income target group, this is a target group that its also getting better and better as the times passes. But still have some barriers, for example, money and education problems. By money I mean that for example if a boy likes to play tennis, this will be an expensive sport for him, so spotter should go to this areas to spot good people play in their own courts and maybe give them a chance and get them sponsored to play in indoor courts or enter competitions. And by education I mean that poorer people tend to have more anger in them selves so this makes other schools not to compete against them, so what it could be done, is give them a free or cheaper coach step programme so they become more professional in the sport they are playing and maybe be a role model to younger boys in the community.