Issue - items at meetings - Sports Development update

Jayne Babb explained that due to illness she was here instead of Jan Sutherland, the Sports & Physical Activity Manager. The purpose of Sports Development Team & the Active for Life Initiative was to support, and create, sport and physical activity opportunities. The focus was on the least active and hard to reach groups. Their work included:

·        recruiting and training volunteers

·        assisting clubs in developing policies and procedures and training coaches

·        one aspect of the work is the Health walks programme - 16 health walks are delivered per week (all are led by trained volunteers and 60% of participants consider themselves to have a disability). The Committee had heard positive feedback about this scheme.

·        The volunteers are supported by 2 paid members of staff who are funded by the Council and the NHS. (Funding finishes in 2012).

·        Delivering a range of sport & physical activity session across the city

·        Summer and Easter Holiday Activity Courses

The aim of the Active for Life team was ‘more people, more active, more often’. The national goal was to have 2 million people active by 2012. Areas were targeted such as Portslade, Tarner, Hollingdean and Hollingbury. Over 3,500 people have engaged in activity sessions, with over 17,000 attendances.

The Primary Care Trust (PCT) was a key partner, as the project is key to delivering the health agenda. A group met regularly to discuss strategic commissioning.

A goal was to raise the profile of sport across the city, with the aiming of getting people to exercise 5 times a week for 30 minutes. Although more people were exercising once or twice a week, this has been exceeded with hard to reach groups.  Participants were monitored for age, frequency of activity, postcode and an attendance register was taken and the data was used for funders, PIs and the LAA.

The Committee expressed its support for programmes such as the AFL taster sessions in the Easter Holidays for schoolchildren.

The funding opportunities (contained in the tables on p27 of the agenda) were identified by a part-time funding officer who also helped other organisations obtain funding. While the Council had bid for all the available programmes, the funds were decreasing. The Committee heard how the team worked to help in rehabilitation, including:

·        GP referral scheme

·        Active for Life directory (which goes out to rehabilitation and physio groups) and website which shows the availability of sporting activities by postcode.

The team worked with sports clubs to get them to welcome those who were keen to participate.  It supported both the MEND and mini-MEND programmes to tackle child obesity and support adult weight management. There had been a big take up of this programme.  

RESOLVED: (1) to note the contents of the report and

(2) to endorse its monitoring and evaluation procedures and the benefits of the programmes provided by the Sports Development Team.