CSP: Yorkshire Sport Foundation
Yorkshire Sport Foundation and West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service worked together to create a Youth Intervention Programme entitled Firefit. The programme combines education and an innovative physical element to boost self-confidence and physical skills in disengaged young people.
With targeted promotion, 73 young people have attended the first six after-school and summer holiday courses run at different fire stations across West Yorkshire using satellite club and Sportivate funding.
The West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service Youth Intervention Team won the National Excellence in Fire and Emergency Partnership Award 2016 based on the collaborative approach and impact of Firefit in the local communities.
The Youth Intervention Team works closely with partners in the public sector, charitable foundations and the education/rehabilitation sector to ensure they are targeting those who would benefit most and that they are able to provide the most appropriate and tailored support.
The FireFit programme combines the experience of the Youth Intervention Team’s delivery of fire safety in the community to young people and the value its employees hold to be physical fit for duty. This unique approach to health and fitness inspires young people in an innovative way, combining many messages and using WYFRS resources and Firefighters as role models.
The programme can be delivered in in a flexible manner and be tailored to the need and demand of the specific groups. Flexibility in delivery, and ability for it to be adapted if needed throughout means the programme always has the participant needs as central and in takes into account cultural differences.
Through the development of basic functional movements, essential personal skills, and with an extra boost of motivation, young people are given a starting point to move into other weekly physical activities.
The development of a FireFit club card over the last two cohorts at the end of 2016, will provide evidence of the types of new sporting activities young people take up after the course. Based on a loyalty card scheme, it includes 14 local clubs in Kirklees. A participant who completes the Firefit course can then attend any one club session a week for free. They can stay at the same club or experience different clubs using this card. After 12 stamps have been collected over 12 weeks (to fit into the research of 12 weeks consistent habit creating a behaviour change) the participant can then choose a club and get a free membership for the year.
My Journey feedback surveys are completed by participants at the beginning and end of the course and individuals are asked to rate themselves in relation to motivation, communication, listening, teamwork, confidence, being happy to ask for help, learning from mistakes and being involved with physical activity. 100% of young people have increased their participation in sport over the lifetime of the programme.
At the start of the programme, all rated doing approximately one hour of physical activity or less a week. By the end of the FireFit course, most had increased this amount to at least 3 hours per week.
Participants also scored themselves as gaining, on average, over 40% more motivation and resilience, as they scored themselves higher in being able to work as a team, being able to ask for help and being able to learn from a mistake and setbacks.
A teacher associated with many children on one course commented on how there had been a change in social behaviours at school, and young people who had previously fallen out had become friends again and were supporting each other. A parent noted that they had never seen their child commit to anything and grow in confidence by doing so: “She usually drops out after a first attempt at something new and with new people”.
One young person commented:
“I can’t believe I have won - I don’t usually win anything…I am now going to try and be better in school, because if I want to do a job like a firefighter, I need to do better.”
Further outcomes:
- 100% of feedback from young people suggested they had a better understanding of the work the fire and rescue service does and they had been inspired to live more positively as a result.
- The course actively promotes equality and diversity, evidenced by the mix of girls, boys and BME attending the sessions.
- “Due to partnership working with Yorkshire Sport Foundation, we are able to impact on groups we would not usually have access to and provide exit routes we may not usually consider.”
- The programme has provided the starting blocks to develop an Ambassador scheme in West Yorkshire, allowing these young people to return, promote and ignite the potential in the next generation of young people WYFRS will work with.
The project’s success is the joint working between WYFRS’s Youth Intervention Team, Yorkshire Sport Foundation and other local organisations.