Blog: 'I feel much more confident now'
New to the English Federation of Disability Sport (EFDS) website in 2015, we'll feature a blog post every Friday through the year.
This month's theme is training- Samantha Chitabura, London BMX Project Officer from the charity Access Sport, writes about working with the National Deaf Children's Society to equip coaches with the skills to train deaf participants.
Samantha Chitabura blog:
Many disabled people are deterred from participating in sport. However, the issue is different for people who are deaf. Communication then becomes the biggest barrier, especially when dealing with first-time participants or relatively inexperienced coaches.
Access Sport’s projects aims to tackle exclusion from sport caused by socio-economic factors, disability, ethnicity and so on, and to transform the lives of young people living in disadvantaged areas in London.
Inclusive sessions are usually run to cater for most young people’s needs. But to make the sessions more accessible and deaf friendly, Making Activities Deaf Friendly (MADF) training is being offered through the National Deaf Children’s Society (NDCS) and is available to leaders and coaches working with children and young people.
'What the training entails'
The six hour training day consists of six different topics to ensure that the coaches are sufficiently equipped come the end of the training.
We begin with an introduction to NDCS and the Me2 project, which calls on youth organisations such as clubs to take small and simple steps towards being inclusive. Then, bringing to life NDCS’ vision for young deaf people to be able to participate on equal terms with their hearing peers across a wide range of activities.
The slogan? We want all deaf young people to be able to stand up and say: “Me too!”
Then we move onto discussing deafness, what is it and how it impacts on deaf children. Communication then features, as participants learn top tips for communicating with deaf children, including the fingerspelling alphabet and some basic British Sign Language.
Attendees then look at developments in assistive technology and find out about the aids and equipment that deaf children use. There’s a look at health and safety and then the really fun part; learning how to adapt existing activities and also discovering some deaf-friendly games that can be played in a group.
"It was excellent!"
The training course has generated positive feedback from those who’ve recently attended, with one coach stating:
“It was excellent! I have had such an enjoyable and informative day. I feel much more confident now and will be taking back the ideas to see how I can make my club more inclusive to deaf children’’
Following delivery of the training course, NDCS has also found that 90% of participants are now more confident in working with deaf children and young people.
After this training the London BMX team - one of Access Sport’s legacy projects - is hoping to run a deaf taster event which will be used to signpost individuals to their nearest deaf-friendly BMX club.
This would hopefully establish participants in their clubs and they can then become regular participants in the sport.
We hope we can create more stories like that of Noah, who is now a regular BMX rider at Hackney BMX.
His is a brilliant story, and it's best I finish here with the words of his mother, Donna:
"Any other families interested in events like this, we’d say ‘just go for it!’. Clubs that have signed the NDCS deaf-friendly pledge know how to support deaf children, so you don’t need to worry. Noah loved it so much that he’s now joined the club!"
