Review of the Year: Transforming the Lives of Disabled People through the Power of Sport
As we say goodbye to 2013 this is a good time to reflect on what has been another busy and successful year for Disability Sport Wales. Here are just some of our highlights...........
Our commitment to creating an inclusive active Wales was accelerated in 2013 as our national sports inclusion project – insport – gathered pace. insport is a project which consists of 3 different programmes, each of which are aimed at a different segment of the Welsh sport and leisure sector – insport NGB (National Governing Bodies), insport Development (Local Authorities) and insport Club. The project is being funded by the St James’s Place Foundation, supported by Sport Wales. By the end of 2013 the project has over-achieved. Five NGBs have gained the Ribbon standard with the Golf Union of Wales (and its development arm – Golf Development Wales) achieving Bronze, whilst 19 LAs have received the insport Development Ribbon with 2 recently being awarded the Bronze level. Within the insport Club programme 156 clubs have attained Ribbon insport Club standard, 21 clubs have attained Bronze standard, whilst 6 have the silver standard and 2 have achieved Gold standard. All in all a great start!
Underpinning much of the insport project is our education and training programme. In 2013 55 UK Disability Inclusion Training courses were delivered. Six of the new ‘Sainsbury’s Active Kids for All’ courses were run impacting on 120 staff. With the support of Sainsbury’s we are now able to work with the education sector up-skilling teachers and support staff by helping them to work within an inclusive physical education setting.
Our Local Authority partnerships remain as strong and as effective as ever. Our network of Disability Sport Wales Development Officers continues to do a fantastic job, once again delivering over 1 million local opportunities at grassroots level. A magnificent effort! Across Wales there are now over 330 clubs, supported by over 4,000 coaches and volunteers providing a broad range of sports and activities all of which can be accessed locally.
In the autumn of 2013 we launched our new Health Disability Sport Pathway in partnership with Betsi Cadwalader University Health Board and supported by Sport Wales through its ‘Call to Action’ programme. Our partnership intends to create enhanced awareness, understanding and greater coherence between the health sector and disability sport network in North Wales, through a planned programme of education and up-skilling of professionals within both areas, so as to better enable a pathway which illustrates and opens opportunities for disabled people to get involved with physical activity, including sport.
Whilst there has been great progress across our community programmes, there have also been some notable achievements resulting from performance programmes. 2013 has seen the emergence of some bright young talent via our Academy programme as well as some world class performances from our senior athletes who represent Great Britain.
Our Table Tennis squad have performed particularly well this year with fine successes in the British, Hungarian, Slovakian, and Belgium Opens and most recently in the Mike Dempsey Memorial Table Tennis Open in San Diego. A total of 23 medals were won by Welsh academy and senior GB players across the year demonstrating the depth and strength of the programme as well as the excellence of the elite and development players.
In cycling, two of our academy riders were invited to join the British Cycling Development Squad whilst Nia Knight and Katie Curtis (tandem) tasted their first international competition when they joined up with the British Cycling squad for the UCI World Cup in Canada. In November success came for our full academy squad at the UCI International Open event hosted at the Wales National Velodrome, Newport, where Welsh cyclists won 6 medals over the course of the weekend. Some great young talent was on show and the future certainly looks bright for Welsh para-cycling over the next few years.
With the support of British Wheelchair Basketball and the Lords Tavernier’s wheelchair basketball continues to grow from strength to strength. In June, Wales hosted the British Junior Wheelchair Basketball Celtic Cup (under 23s) in Newport University picking up second place overall – the squads best showing to date. Wales now has 8 clubs, with our premier team the Celts performing well with squads in the first and second British divisions.
In Boccia Wales enjoyed an international match with Ireland, whilst senior athletes represented Great Britain in the BISFED European Championships winning 2 medals. With a review of the national programme now underway it is expected that the sport will enjoy further growth in 2014.
A new partnership with Great Britain Wheelchair Rugby and the Welsh Rugby Charitable Trust has seen the appointment of a part time wheelchair rugby development officer with new programmes being rolled out to continue the development of the sport in Wales, as well as supporting our two existing clubs the South Wales Pirates and the North Wales Dragons.
Shooting is a relatively new paralympic sport on our radar with Gwynedd product and now GB representative Owen Burke bursting onto the scene in 2013 winning medals at both the Turkish and Thailand World Cups. The Welsh Target Shooting Federation is particularly supportive of developing an inclusive programme and has already started to qualify officials within paralympic shooting disciplines.
Disability swimming saw two Swim Wales (Swansea based) athletes, Morgyn Peters and Jack Thomas compete for British Swimming at the World Championships in Montreal. Both athletes finished the year in great form at the Welsh Winter Long Curse Championships both taking new British records. Both swimmers will be hoping for selection to Team Wales for the Commonwealth Games in 2014.
2013 proved that athletics continues to be a high performing sport for Wales with 11 athletes selected for the IPC Athletics World Championships, winning 7 medals between them. Welsh athletes competed in force at a number of domestic and European events, whilst 1 athlete represented GB at the INAS World Athletics Championships for intellectually disabled athletes.
In bowls, Welsh para and visually impaired bowlers welcomed Australia to Llandrindod Wells in a pre Commonwealth Games tournament. Later in the season our visually impaired pair took silver in the 8 Nations test event for Glasgow 2014. An excellent performance given the strength of the opposition.
In sailing, Steve Thomas enjoyed continued success with his crew in the sonar class winning a medal at the EUROSAF for Great Britain.
Disability Sport Wales was proud to support the two Welsh athletes who competed for Team GB at the Deaflympics in Sofia. They didn’t disappoint bringing home 2 medals in cycling,
We were also proud to support the Special Olympics Wales team who performed with great distinction and pride at the Special Olympics GB National Games in Bath. Huge credit must go to the management and support team who did a magnificent job in preparing and supporting the team.
Welsh disability sport was once again recognised across a wide variety of awards. Barry Stephens won the Welsh Sports Association Unsung Hero Award for his commitment to disability sport, and in-particular athletics, MBEs went to athletes Tracey Hinton, Aled Sion Davies and Josie Pearson whilst high performance coach and DSW National Performance Manager, Anthony Hughes was bestowed with a richly deserved MBE for Services to Disability Sport. Following another outstanding season Aled Sion Davies was named as a finalist in the Welsh Sports Personality Award for 2013.
In 2013 Disability Sport Wales underlined its commitment toward equality by achieving the Preliminary Level of the Equality Standard. Our standards of governance remain high achieving a healthy ‘green’ self assurance status with a further clean bill of health from our external auditors, UHY Peachey’s. Both of these outcomes reflecting the strength of our internal Business Support Unit and the outstanding role they play in supporting our programmes. We also celebrated 10 years of partnership with our legal partners Dolmans Solicitors (of Cardiff). Many of our internal procedures are as a result of their support and we look forward to continuing our relationship over the years to come.
We were also proud to introduce our two new Sports Chaplains to Disability Sport Wales, Heather Lewis and Dave Hibbins, and look forward to further developing this innovative service in 2014.
So as the curtain falls on 2013 we can also look ahead with optimism and excitement to what should be another challenging and busy year ahead.
Our drive toward the goal of becoming an inclusive sporting nation will continue as we expand our insport programme, supporting more partners and agencies to embrace philosophical change and good inclusive practise.
In April we will stage our National Stakeholder Conference in Cardiff where we will share with our key partners our vision and aspirations for disability sport in Wales through to 2020.
The conference will also be a good opportunity to highlight the work of our partners the Welsh Sports Association for People with Learning Disability and Welsh Deaf Sport both of whom will both be launching their own strategies which link to our own in 2014.
The Glasgow Commonwealth Games promises to be one of the highlights of the year where our athletes will represent a fully inclusive Team Wales in the sports of athletics, swimming, bowls and cycling. With the bowls squad already announced in December, all efforts are now being made to ensure that our athletes perform to the very best of their ability, with hopes remaining high for a good medal return. Set your alarms for the 23rd July for the Opening Ceremony.
Closer to home we can look forward to Swansea hosting the IPC Athletics European Championships, the first time the event has been held in Great Britain. Around 600 athletes from 40 countries are expected to compete in the event which will be staged at Swansea University between the 18-23rd August 2014.
So much to look forward to over the coming months ahead...
My final thoughts must turn to those who make disability sport happen in Wales. Many thanks to the thousands of volunteers who support our work, year in year out. Whether you volunteer as a Board member, administrator, sports coach, support staff member, bus driver or kit washer you all do an amazing job and we simply could not deliver our programmes without you. A huge thank you on behalf of all of the athletes and participants who benefit from your effort!
Also my thanks go to our sponsors and partners who make such a difference across some many aspects of our work. As well as our main partners Welsh Government and Sport Wales, our family of strategic partners continues to grow – Deloitte, Sinclair VW Cardiff, Ace Feet in Motion, Snowdrop Care and Mobility, General Dynamics, UHY Peachey’s, Dolmans Solicitors, Strachan Sports Travel, Welsh Rugby Charitable Trust, South Wales Chamber of Commerce, Sportsaid Cymru, Rotary Clubs including Cardiff Bay & Caernarfon, and the St James’s Place Foundation all providing support and assistance when we most need it.
It only remains for me to wish every-one a happy and successful new year. We look forward to continuing our journey with you in 2014.
