All of our children and young people work is focused around positive experiences for young people as we want every child and young person to experience the enjoyment and benefits that being active can bring.
In an ever-changing landscape, we aim to work with and support a wide range of partners to increase opportunities for children and young people. We continue to support projects and initiatives focusing on increasing the number of young people involved in movement, physical activity and sport both in educational and community-based settings.
There are a number of guiding principles for our work.
- We are focused on young people aged 5-18 (25 for young people with a disability)
- All of our work is underpinned by appropriate safeguarding
- We help to create opportunities for young people to participate in regular movement, physical activity and sport. In particular activities that are aligned to achieving the Chief Medical Officer’s recommendation of delivering moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity.
- We are led by young people where possible, including involving young people in decisions and design, thus creating greater participant satisfaction
- We help to embed the five elements of physical literacy – enjoyment, confidence, competence, understanding and knowledge.
- We strive to improve the mental wellbeing of children and young people through movement, physical activity and sport.
- As your Lottery-funded Active Partnership we are partner neutral. This means that we do not quality assure or endorse any specific organisation over another.
To support our work around positive experiences for children and young people we believe there are four main work themes that our work will fall into:
- Tackling inequalities
- Health and wellbeing
- Workforce
- School Experiences
Tacking inequalities
Yorkshire Sport Foundation has 35 identified focus communities which are low socio-economic group areas of an IMD of <20%. 70% of our resources are prioritised within these communities. The remaining 30% is targeted at but are not limited to, girls and young women, disabled young people, LGBT+ community and ethnically diverse groups.
Despite some positive results in the recent Active Lives data, the inequality gap still remains:
- Girls and young women from lower socio-economic groups and Black and South Asian communities are less likely to be active.
- There was no change in the number of people from lower-socio economic groups who are getting active and they remain significantly less likely to be active than those from higher-socio economic groups.
- South Asian and Black adults are the least likely to be active.
This is reflected in the Active Lives data for Children and People and emphasises the need to create good healthy habits early.
Health and Wellbeing
We work to connect our work into wider health and wellbeing agendas across the network. This includes some bespoke projects/programmes as well as supporting wider outcomes such as mental wellbeing, obesity and anti-social behaviour.
- Safety Nets
- Home Goals
- Young People Forward
Workforce
We work to upskill and diversify the workforce. This includes people who deliver activities to young people as well as inspiring and upskilling young people. We want to ensure that the people working in movement, physical activity and sport feel confident, valued and supported. By doing so, they will be able to provide the best possible experience for young people.
- FE Ambassador Programme
- Intro to gangs training
- DfE Leadership
School Experiences:
A large part of our education work is centered around the Creating Active Schools Framework. In addition to this, we focus our work on supporting the different agencies needed to embed physical activity in the school’s ethos.
We want to provide a structure for all schools to ensure physical activity can be embedded at the heart of their culture and ethos.
Click here for more information on our education-based work.