Creating moving opportunities for all

This year, UK Disability History Month focussed on the experience of disablement amongst children and young people.

The month-long celebration wanted to create awareness for this group and provide an opportunity for society to examine their approaches to including disabled children and young people, and for all sectors to work towards creating accessible and inclusive services that are welcoming for everyone.

Enjoyment is key

For us at Sport England and our partners, it is an opportunity to highlight the importance of ensuring disabled children and young people have positive experiences in sport and physical activity, because every disabled child and young person has the right to be active.

That’s why Sport England continues to prioritise the development of accessible, inclusive and enjoyable opportunities for all children and young people as part of our long-term strategy, Uniting the Movement.

If we help children and young people build a positive relationship with movement and activity, by listening to and co-designing activity with them and their families, we’ll be helping them to grow up healthy, live happier lives and with the skills they need to thrive.

An example of our commitment to this is the support given to the development and publication of the infographic for the UK Chief Medical Officers’ physical activity guidelines for disabled children and disabled young people, published in February 2022.

The infographic was designed in cooperation with this group and their families and key to note that this is the first of their kind for children and young people.

Earlier this month, we published our latest Children and Young People Active Lives survey showing fewer than half of children and young people are meeting the Chief Medical Officers’ guidelines.
 

This statistic demonstrates the scale of the challenge facing our country, as too many children and young people are missing out on the benefits of living active lives.

Sport and physical activity have a vital role to play in the lives of all children and young people as we know that when they’re active, children are happier, healthier and more confident and resilient.

In the same month that children and young people went back to school after the summer break, we published The Physical Literacy Consensus Statement for England.

In developing the statement we worked with over 50 organisations not only from our sector, but from academia, community, health and education.

A truly collaborative piece of work that culminated in a fully-inclusive statement recognising that different people may have different experiences and relationships with the concept of moving and being active.

And it was here that, once again, the importance of children and young people being active in an environment that’s welcoming and inclusive, that is adapted to them, was highlighted - as this will help children and young people to remain active later in life.   

Reducing the inactivity gap for disabled people

Other programmes and organisations that we’re investing in are working to get more disabled children and young people active, like Path to Paris - the official youth engagement programme from Team GB and ParalympicsGB, with funding from Sport England and Spirit of 2012.

While celebrating UKDHM, we also saw blogs from GB Power Hockey Association and Disability Snowsport UK - wonderful examples of organisations that we've partnered with to support disabled young people to try new sports and build their physical activity habits.   

Towards the end of the summer, the Government set some ambitious targets for increasing the number of active disabled people by 2030 in their new sport strategy, ‘Get Active: A strategy for the future of sport and physical activity’ .

They want to see 700,000 more active people who identify as having one or more impairments, and at Sport England we welcome these challenges and we’ll keep working to be able to meet them.

Recent commitments 

The commitment was further explored at a recent event, supported by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Sport to mark the International Day of Persons with Disabilities on 3 December.

The discussion was organised by us, in collaboration with UK Sport, the British Paralympic Association, Activity Alliance and the Sport and Recreation Alliance, and explored the barriers to activity faced by all disabled people as we approach the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games.  

As we move into the new year, we look forward to continuing our work with a range of partners, including disability charities and sports organisations to continue to tackle inequalities for young disabled people, and ensure that every young person can benefit from living an active life.