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insport
insport is a Disability Sport Wales project which aims to support the physical activity, sport, and leisure sectors delivering inclusively of disabled people.
The principle behind insport is for DSW to develop toolkits which will support the development of inclusive thinking, planning, development and delivery by everyone within National Governing Bodies (NGBs), Local Authorities, Leisure Trusts, third sector organisations and community clubs.
The intention is to initiate and then support cultural change with regards to the approaches the sectors have towards disabled people, and to support the identification of an understanding of what inclusion means to them as a collection of organisations. The result will be that opportunity is widened, participation increases, disabled people become more active and engaged (either as players, or officials, coaches, or volunteers), and we collectively achieve the sector vision for an active nation where everyone can have a lifelong enjoyment of sport.
Disability Sport Wales have developed toolkits to support organisations to deliver excellent standards of inclusion for disabled people in sport and physical activity, and these are split in to the following three Strands:
- insport Club
- insport NGB
- insport Partnerships
Each Strand consists of four incremental Standards (Ribbon, Bronze, Silver and Gold), against which a series of aims have been identified across three areas; workforce development, programme support and organisation.
At Ribbon Standard, insport NGB and insport Partnerships organisations are assigned a Case Officer who will provide specialised inclusion expertise to support them to achieve the aims against each Standard. At the end of each stage, the NGB or Partnerships organisation will present their journey so far to an independent panel where they demonstrate the support for each aim by uploading relevant documents and information to our bespoke insport portal , and the content of the presentation then serves to illustrate the extent to which philosophies of inclusion have been embedded throughout the organisation, and the difference that working towards inclusion has made.
We have over 300 community clubs working towards insport Club Standards. The purpose for insport Club is to support clubs in developing their provision so that it includes disabled people within clubs’ structures and activities which provide the best opportunities to the community, increase participation and membership, enable larger sections of the community to become involved within a voluntary governance role, and continue to provide great sport across Wales. The insport Club toolkit is intended to support the development of inclusive thinking, planning, development and delivery by the club so that ultimately they could deliver across the spectrum to disabled and non-disabled people, potentially in a range of different formats. This toolkit is about good practice across the board, and in doing this will mean that opportunities for involvement in the sport(s) the clubs offer will increase.
Achieving an insport Standard gives recognition to the inclusivity of the organisation and also provides a brand recognition to disabled people, families and professionals to know that organisations have made a commitment towards providing good quality opportunities for disabled people.
