Today Activity Alliance has added to its suite of support with a set of engagement factsheets. From planning opportunities to measuring impact, the resources help providers to strengthen their work, enabling organisations to engage more disabled people to be and stay active for life.
The latest Sport England Active Lives Survey (11 April 2019) showed that activity levels are rising, particularly for women and disabled people and people with long-term health conditions. Despite these recent positive results, the stark reality is disabled people are twice as likely to be inactive as non-disabled people.
Now is the ideal time to increase our efforts to engage more disabled people and these latest resources are extremely timely for providers across many sectors. Supported by Sport England, Activity Alliance is encouraging those who plan and deliver opportunities to think about the ways they include disabled people. The updated resources cover ten topics and are free to download:
- Know your audience
- Effective engagement
- Engagement through research and insight
- Gathering and using insight on disabled people
- Accessible and inclusive communications
- Engaging older people
- Understanding children and young people
- Supporters’ roles in engaging disabled people
- Engaging all women in sport and physical activity
- Performance measurement and learning
Activity Alliance has a team of Advisors to support local and national work. The Engagement Advisors cover nine regions across England. Along with our National Advisors, they support key strategic partners, including Active Partnerships and National Governing Bodies of Sport (NGBs).
Ray Ashley, Head of Engagement for Activity Alliance, said:
“We know there is more than one way to engage disabled people and no set plan to ensure disabled people can take part in sport or active recreation. We want to empower organisations by providing the right support, connections and insight, so that more disabled people can access meaningful and sustainable opportunities. These resources are a great first step in learning more about effective engagement and our expert advisors are available to give detailed guidance if you need more support.”
To access the new resources, visit the engagement page on our website.