Glo-active colleagues enjoy Sainsbury’s Inclusive Community Training
Sainsbury’s Inclusive Community Training is for those who support disabled people of all ages within the community, and have an opportunity to put the training into practice.
Hayley Huntley, from Glo-active in Gloucestershire is one of a team of experienced, qualified, diverse practitioners who share the same vision and passion; to provide enjoyable, educational and fun activities and to be as inclusive as possible.
Hayley and her colleagues are among the more than 4,400 people who have benefited from Sainsbury’s Inclusive Community Training which is designed to improve the skills and confidence of those who support disabled people to be more active, and is a creative and informal development opportunity.
“Roughly a dozen of us did the training together, mainly support workers and a couple of youth workers,” Hayley told the English Federation of Disability Sport (EFDS).
“Glo-active took the training because we work with organisations and lots of disabled people. Different members of staff were confident to differing extents, and we wanted to ensure that there was an equal amount of knowledge among everyone.
“I wanted us to learn how to make sport more inclusive. We’d always struggled because the majority of our experience as an organisation was delivering to non-disabled participants.
“We wanted to learn how we could simplify or adapt activities, and also how to engage with people regardless of impairment.”
The Glo-active team attended a workshop which had been arranged by local county sports partnership Active Gloucestershire and was run by an experienced tutor from programme partners sports coach UK.
And Hayley was clear that the training proved extremely informative and practical.
“I remember on the day really looking forward to it – I love practical training. And we’re all quite a lively bunch, keen to get involved and take part rather than sit behind a desk.
“On the day I liked the fact that everybody got stuck in and we were encouraged to think outside the box in terms of adapting methods of delivery. There were some excellent conversations regarding how to adapt things to make them easier or more accessible.
“It was an eye-opener. We all realised that perceived barriers are not actually always barriers.”
And Sainsbury’s Inclusive Community Training has provided Glo-active with a range of new skills and additional experience that have been applied in the months since the workshop.
“We’ve mainly used what we learned at our Saturday Starz session, which we run for 8-18 year olds who have a mix of impairments,” explains Hayley.
“Subsequent to the training we’ve become more confident in introducing sport into the mix. It’s great, particularly for the young people. It has also helped with team-building, involving a lot of people who used to struggle to feel involved.
“As an example, the other weekend we successfully adapted a game of pool using a bigger white ball. It made it a lot more accessible and a lot more fun, because the sport became more achievable.
“We’re all now wiser in our inclusive delivery. If you can facilitate someone every week so they can positively engage in a sporting activity that is often enough for that individual.”
