Birmingham taking the LEAD on accessible delivery
Birmingham recently celebrated their success as host City for the Commonwealth Games 2022. The City takes great pride in its ability to hold high-level sporting events but inactivity is a real problem for its residents. This is even more so for disabled people and people with long-term health conditions. In a positive move, three of the key sporting and physical activity organisations have decided to look at how they operate. They have all undertaken our LEAD (Leading Equitable and Accessible Delivery) toolkit.
LEAD is a self-improvement toolkit that follows the Business Excellence Model. It helps organisations look at all areas of their work and embed better practice in disability equality. Amongst the organisations benefitting are County Sports Partnerships (CSPs), National Governing Bodies of sport (NGBs) and leisure operators.
Aston Villa Football Foundation recently completed this process and have a clear plan to develop further. They join Sport Birmingham and Birmingham City Council who both completed the process 18 months ago and have been developing since.
Aston Villa Football Foundation has a strong community presence for the delivery of sport, not just football, and shown a real commitment to developing their offer for disabled people. They have been delivering opportunities from Ability Counts to Powerchair football. They have some disabled staff members working within their programmes. After going through considerable change recently, the Foundation felt it was an ideal time to embed an inclusive approach across their organisation.
Debbi Rawson, for Aston Villa Football Foundation, said:
"Going through the LEAD toolkit has been a great process for our Foundation. We are in the initial growing stages of our disability provision so this has really helped us to shape a clear action plan to work from. Support from EFDS has been key to helping us move forward and we are excited to continue working with them in developing disability provision across Birmingham."
One of their key focuses is to become a hub to help both sporting and non-sporting disability organisations share good practice, support each other and provide collaborative working.
Birmingham is the first City to have three key organisations go through this process. This combined with the other great work that is already taking place, such as the Birmingham Inclusive Sport Festival, puts the City in an ideal place to address the levels of inactivity.
All three organisations want to reduce the level of inactivity across the City. They are keen to hear from organisations and individuals living with disability or long-term health conditions, including those who are inactive.
