Engagement in the North - bringing partners together
Tom Webster is Activity Alliance’s Engagement Advisor for the North West and North East. Among his responsibilities, he brings organisations together for regional meetings to improve opportunities for disabled people in sport and active recreation. Here, Tom talks about his role in helping better engagement in the North.
In October, I coordinated two regional meetings. North West’s took place at Lancashire FA’s headquarters in Leyland. The North East meeting was at the impressive new home of the Foundation of Light, Sunderland AFC’s community foundation - the Beacon of Light.
During these events, key providers come together and discuss a range of topics. They include County Sports Partnerships (CSPs), football club foundations, county FAs, facilities and schools. Local organisations come along also to explain the opportunities and challenges of working in the North West and North East. Representatives of national organisations such as sporting governing bodies and National Disability Sports Organisations (NDSOs) can then take this knowledge on board as they plan their future investments.
These meetings allow this diverse group of partners to spend time together to:
- better understand the needs of disabled people
- plan how they will work together in the future
- learn from successful programmes run by other organisations
This occasion it included presentations on the latest research report - The Activity Trap and the NDSOs’ offer. We also discussed resources to improve the resilience and mental wellbeing of young people.
At the last North West forum, in March 2018, Neil Bunting from Cage Cricket attended to talk about their game and its set-up for disabled people. Following the meeting, Cheshire Centre for Independent Living (a disabled people’s user-led organisation) saw the opportunity this would provide for their service users, and arranged for Neil to run taster sessions.
The success of these taster sessions led Active Cheshire, the local County Sports Partnership, to provide funding to buy Cage Cricket kits. These will be used in Day Care centres across Cheshire East, where disabled people have been enjoying playing the game over the summer.
Tom Bell, from Cheshire Centre for Independent Living, said:
“Thanks for connecting CCIL up with Cage Cricket at the NW Forum. We had Neil deliver two sessions yesterday in Cheshire to local day centre services and had close to 40 people attend. The service managers were impressed how inclusive the game was and Active Cheshire has now provided funding to buy the equipment and provide day centre staff with the training so that we can have a sustained session!”
