Tackling Child Poverty and promotion Equality

Our core business is ensuring that children, young people and adults are participating in sport and, where appropriate, have the support to excel.

We believe that all children and young people should be able to access and benefit from sport. We need to ensure that we are proactively working with our partners, both traditional, such as local authorities and governing bodies, and non-traditional in order to overcome or minimise barriers to participation among children and young people living in poverty.

Data from our surveys indicate that children, young people and adults living in more deprived areas are less likely to participate in sport, with adults also less likely. We do not accept that these lower participation figures are inevitable and we are committed to continuing to work with our partners to ensure that sporting opportunities are actively encouraged as part of a broader life experience and that the participation gap between those living in poverty and those not is closed.

We firmly support the view that poverty should not only be viewed in purely economic terms, but that we should also address poverty of opportunity and poverty of aspiration. To this end we have produced a Child Poverty Strategy that complements this document and sets out what we, as Sport Wales, will do to play our part in eradicating child poverty in Wales.

This work will also complement our wider work on equality and ensuring that sport is an activity that can be enjoyed safely by all children, young people and adults in Wales. These areas will form themes within our discussions with partners about their plans and activities to develop sport.

Our Child Poverty and Eqaulity Commitments

Developing and providing the evidence base

• Ensure that the data we collect through our national surveys of adults, children and young people provide us with a robust statistical basis for evidencing participation levels in deprived communities
• Bring together research to explore the barriers to participation from deprived communities and what are the necessary conditions in order to increase participation from these communities, to aid our partners understanding of different approaches.
• Prioritise the dissemination of best practice around increasing opportunities and participation in deprived communities as part of Sport Wales' wider role in producing an evidence base for developing sport.

Maximising the impact of sport on children and young people living in poverty

• Work with our local authority and governing body partners to ensure that tackling child poverty is a core theme of our joint planning, reflecting any local child poverty plans already in place.
• Identify and prioritise work with local partners, statutory, voluntary and private, that are working within deprived communities in order to maximize the benefits of sport on the lives of children, young people and families within those communities.

Provide training and support to our staff and the wider sector

• Provide training initially to all sport facing Sport Wales Senior Officers working with partners on child poverty, the duty on Sport Wales and how we can challenge and support our partners to maximise sports contribution. This training can then be made available to partners as appropriate and necessary.

Maximise potential to deliver elite success

• Work with our governing bodies to ensure that living in poverty is not a barrier to talent and developing that talent, including looking at location of talent academies and access to appropriate coaching and support.

Growing the sporting workforce

• Work with partners to encourage them to develop volunteering strategies that look beyond traditional recruitment and towards new partnerships that can provide new skills to those living in deprived communities as well as improve future employment prospects.

Develop key equality objectives for a single equality plan

• Develop and implement work to deliver equality of opportunity for the 9 protected characteristics defined in the Equality Act 2010: age; disability; gender reassignment; pregnancy & maternity; ethnicity; religion & belief; gender; sexual orientation; marriage & civil partnership.