Sainsbury’s Inclusive Community Training: "Include everyone"
There is just over a year to go of Sainsbury’s Inclusive Community Training, the workshop that has enabled over 5,800 people to better support disabled people to be more active.
Delivered by the English Federation of Disability Sport (EFDS) and sports coach UK, the programme is designed to improve the skills and confidence of participants, and is a creative and informal development opportunity.
Hayley Huntley, an experienced and qualified practitioner at Glo-Active in Gloucestershire, took the workshop back in 2014. Here she explains how Sainsbury’s Inclusive Community Training has improved the charity’s delivery.
What first attracted you to the training?
I’d seen Sainsbury’s Inclusive Community Training advertised and the term “inclusive” stood out to me.
At that time in 2014 we wanted staff to gain as much training as possible with regards to devising accessible activities.
Traditionally we’d delivered mainstream sports, not in a particularly inclusive way. So we thought it would be a good idea to learn how to do things differently.
What is the nature of your work?
Glo-Active are open six days a week, Monday to Saturday, and we work with people aged eight to 70. Our activities range throughout the week, everything from sport, arts, crafts, drama, dance and cooking.
What did you want to gain from the Sainsbury’s Inclusive Community Training workshop?
We knew we needed the training because although myself and my colleagues had done years of youth work we wanted to transition into more inclusive delivery. We needed our activities to be suitable for people with disabilities.
Have you implemented any of what you learned?
These days, when were are planning our activity sessions we consider all the different adaptations that might be required. Perhaps in the past if we set up a game of tennis or cricket we just thought about the traditional game with the usual spaces and participants, and we didn’t consider adapting it.
Nowadays we are thinking a lot more, now we have an understanding that everyone participating can enjoy the same outcomes just in different ways.
Have you any specific examples?
In tennis we have some participants who struggle to hold a racquet, so now we have acquired some pads that can be slid onto the hand and used instead of a racquet. Everyone begins by sitting down, tapping the ball between them.
And because we also have a couple of visually impaired attendees we now have tennis balls with rattles inside, so they can hear the ball in play.
Equipment plays a big role, but it’s also about understanding what we might actually need and how best we can use it.
Now we’re able to include everyone in an activity, and that alone demonstrates the worth of Sainsbury’s Inclusive Community Training.
Would you encourages others to access the training?
If you are someone who works with disabled people delivering activities you can get too focused on the actual delivery and less about considering how to break things down to make it more accessible.
You can learn how to make your activities much more inclusive and, once you develop the skills, you’ll wonder why you never did it before!
