The Project
Get Active is a unique sport and physical activity programme focussing on young people from high areas of deprivation. We worked together with the local housing association Golding Homes to create an activity programme that would work for the individual and their community, and looked to address some ongoing issues highlighted by local residents such as: nuisance behaviours; lack of pride in their community and the barriers that their location provides.
The project has the ultimate aim of:
- Creating more cohesive communities.
- Equipping local people with the appropriate skills to offer better life chances.
- Improving the local environment and creating happier, healthier places to live.
- Significantly reducing the number of disturbances, occasions of nuisance and occurrences of anti-social behaviour.
Customer Insight & Engagement
The success of the Get Active project is down to invaluable local knowledge, relationships with local people and the partnerships created.
Since January 2017 the project has engaged 444 young people aged 3-18 across 12 different sports and activities, with an average attendance of 21 young people per session! It has seen 37 different partners come together from a variety of different sectors including Health, Community Safety, Media and Environmental.
Utilising local insight and the local knowledge of key partners such as Golding Homes Neighbourhood Advisors and Community Safety, in addition to consulting with the local young people has enabled us to deliver the activities that the young people want. In the right time, delivered by the right people, in the right locations. This has seen us develop girls only sessions and run boxing in two locations under a mile apart due to neighbourhood tensions.
To showcase the project, we asked the young people involved to create a video (see video submitted) of some of the sessions which has given opportunities to those who may not be sporty, but still want to have a role in the programme
Key Objectives, Evaluation and Outcomes
Using our participation data and feedback we are able to gain further insight into the project and those involved.. Social Benefit has been calculated using community investment values from the Social Value Bank, created by HACT and Daniel Fujiwara. The results reveal that £545,918 of social impact has been created by the project in 2017 from young people participating in frequent mild exercise and attendance at youth clubs.
We were also able to introduce questionnaires for the participants/parents at both the start of the programme and the end, ensuring that we could precisely measure activity levels before and after the sessions, as well as wider outcomes related to place shaping.
It was also possible to capture individual qualitative feedback via the questionnaires that were completed at the end of the programme. Some of the feedback that was received is as follows:
- I like that it is close to my house
- The coaches were fun
- Learning new skills with my mates was the best
- Learning to play and joining a local club was the best
There has been a dramatic and significant improvement in the amount of young people who are regularly active as a result of the Get Active sessions. At the beginning and end of the sessions we asked the young people how active they were, and the percentage that were regularly active increased from 48% to 92% as a result of Get Active in 2017.
Stakeholder Engagement and Leadership
Get Active is of strategic importance from a local, regional and national perspective to the county as it helps to address the need for provision for under-represented groups, in this case, people from a lower socio-economic backgrounds.
We have worked with a number of partners from both a strategic and delivery perspective utilising their knowledge and expertise from within their own sector. This has included sports specific knowledge via NGB’S, clubs, leisure trusts and local authorities to, youth and children’s services, community safety, youth justice and health. This joined up way of working has ensured that we have provided the best offer to the customer, in a setting that may not have been traditionally used by some of the partners.
Innovative Practice
What makes our project innovative is its approach and way of working. We have put the customer at the heart of the project and understood our audience. We have created common grounds within the community, listened, and most importantly been a reliable resource to a community so often being made promises that have not been fulfilled. In addition to our understanding of our audience the flexibility of our programme is what makes it unique. We have the buy in of a number of sports and activity providers to deliver appropriate activity to our target audiences. This has enabled us to replicate this project with other housing associations in other areas, by allowing us to consult with young people on activities and then having accessible to a reliable resource of activity providers who are able to initiative an offer across Kent.
Sustainability and Development
We are continuously engaging and consulting with the local community and participants looking to improve ways of working and involve new partners who can add value to the project. We have built on our existing relationship with Wellbeing People, who use health and wellbeing to engage and empower people, to provide health checks and information to the families involved, as well as creating new relationships with organisations such as Fusion Healthy Living Centre and Shepway Chariots.
As part of Get Active we have been able to signpost young people to suitable clubs in order to keep them engaged in activity, however in some locations there are no suitable options, and where possible new sessions have been started charging a nominal fee to maintain the accessibility to all. A mentoring programme has also been initiated to create a workforce, generating longevity of the project.
Due to the success of the Get Active programme we now have a number of housing providers across Kent looking to provide activity provision to their residents. As a result there is some investment from these providers that could potentially create a Housing Association Officer post to roll out a county wide customer led programme