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.