£300,000 Sport England bid to extend project into East Sussex
Disabled people in East Sussex will have more opportunities to get involved in sport after the Sports for All in Sussex Project received £300,000 of funding from Sport England's Inclusive Sport Fund.
The club is one of 44 projects across England that will benefit from £8.06 million of National Lottery investment from Sport England to open up more opportunities for disabled people to play sport.
The Sports for All in Sussex project, managed and led by The Grace Eyre Foundation, and delivered in partnership with Out There! and Special Olympics Brighton & Hove aims to increase sporting opportunities for adults with learning disabilities. The project is currently running across Brighton & Hove and West Sussex and is funded by Sport England's Inclusive Sport Fund (Round 1).
In December 2013 Grace Eyre, in partnership with Hastings Borough Council's Active Hastings, Rother District Council's Active Rother, Albion in the Community and not for profit leisure trust Freedom Leisure applied to the Sport England Inclusive Sport Fund (Round 2) to extend the current Sports for All in Sussex project into East Sussex. The project and partners have also worked closely with the commissioning officers at East Sussex County Council who were also instrumental in this successful funding bid.
Over the coming months the partner organisations will be working hard to establish the project in East Sussex and will see new members of specialist staff employed for the next 3 year period.
Jon Hart, Sports Coordinator for the project said:
"This is an exciting time for the project, partners, East Sussex and disability sport. We are looking forward to increasing sports provision and increasing opportunities for those with disabilities across East Sussex." He also added, "With the current project, we work with local clubs and organisations to add disability sessions to their current provision using the expertise of all the project partners. This is what we will aim to do in East Sussex."
Sport England Director of Insight, Lisa O'Keefe, said:
"We are delighted to be able to help Sports for All in Sussex to provide more opportunities for disabled people to give sport a go. Record numbers of disabled people now play sport and it's thanks to clubs like this that we can continue to improve opportunities and make a real difference in communities."
The number of disabled people playing sport regularly is on the rise. In December 2013, Sport England's Active People Survey - an annual, in-depth measure of the nation's sporting habits – revealed that a record number of disabled people in England now play sport each week. However, non-disabled people are still twice as likely to play sport as disabled people (39.2 per cent compared to 18.5 per cent) which is why Sport England continues to focus attention and investment to address this imbalance.
Sport England's Inclusive Sport Fund supports programmes that aim to increase the number of disabled people playing sport. Since the fund launched, £17.1 million has been invested in 88 projects that make sport a viable lifestyle choice for disabled people.
As well as funding disability sport programmes, Sport England also funds equipment. In addition to today's £8.06 million announcement, Sport England also recently awarded £1 million to 141 clubs across England to help them buy equipment to open up sport to disabled people.
In 2013, Sport England invested £2million into the English Federation of Disability Sport (EFDS) to help accelerate our strategy to increase sports participation over two years. They have also directly funded six disability sports organisations to advise, support and guide other sports governing bodies as they create opportunities for participation by disabled people. British Blind Sport, Cerebral Palsy Sport, Dwarf Sport Association UK, WheelPower, UK Deaf Sport and Mencap Sport/Special Olympics GB all received a share of £1.3 million of National Lottery funding to make this happen.
