Inclusive Swimming at Perdiswell

With the opening of the new pool in January 2017, Active Communities Worcester (ACW) wanted to provide more opportunity for young people with disabilities to participate in swimming. The Active Communities team applied for an initial Sportivate grant to start an inclusive swimming programme at Perdiswell Leisure Centre. The initial 8 week Sportivate project engaged 15 young people in a programme of inclusive Halliwick style swimming sessions, focused on developing water confidence, strength and movements through visual and audio stimulation, swimming techniques and lots of fun games. The success of the initial Sportivate project let to ACW succouring additional Sportivate funding to run three more 8 weeks projects to engage new participants in inclusive swimming. To provide an exit route for these young people who completed their 8 week inclusive swim programme, ACW developed some inclusive swim classes integrated within Perdiswell’s existing swim school. ACW identified where these classes would sit best with in the structure of the existing school, for example, identifying the quieter times in the programme. Two disability swim school classes were established and each class now regularly has 5 participants working their way through Swim England’s learn to swim pathway. Some young people enjoyed the halliwick style Sportivate sessions but didn’t want to progress onto the swim school. Therefore, ACW secured Satellite club funding to develop the Sportivate sessions into a regular weekly sustainable session for group inclusive swimming. This group soon filled with some very enthusiastic young people who have a range of different needs, including learning support needs and cerebral palsy. Perdiswell Leisure Centre now offers sustainable weekly inclusive group sessions for young people with disabilities as well as two classes of

disability swim school for those who wish to progress through the levels of learn to swim.

· 3 different groups of sustainable inclusive swimming taking place at Perdiswell Leisure Centre each week

· 124 sessions of inclusive swimming delivered since January 2017

· 816 times young people with disabilities have participated in inclusive swimming at Perdiswell Leisure centre

ACW/AS

vanessa.bale@freedom-leisure.co.uk

“What a fabulous opportunity for the children, my child would never be able to cope in a group of eight with just the one instructor; this really is amazing for them to be part of the swim school.”

Mrs Rowberry (mother of participant) “All children are progressing at their own pace with some really positive and constructive activity taking place.”

Vanessa Bale (Aquatics Development Officer)

09/04/2018

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Active Ageing in Worcester

This year a key focus for Active Communities Worcester has been around developing an Active Ageing offer, specifically providing innovative and targeted opportunities for older people to regularly get active. The process was started in June by carrying out a consultation phase to determine the how, what, when and where of how this older aged demographic would like to get active in Worcester. The consultation was very successful with 90 respondents, providing us with key information in shaping our Active Ageing offer.

The consultation results showed that the older age demographic generally wanted to be active in the late mornings or early afternoon during the working week, with commitments such as seeing family limiting their availability on weekends. This matched nicely with the Leisure Centres as these times were typically when the centre were less busy. The results also showed a demand for activities such as exercise to music, seated games and walking sports. As a result we delivered a range of taster sessions for older people in the community and at our leisure centres, including activities such as Bowls and seated exercise to music.

Building on the success of the pilot sessions we developed and enhanced a range of programmes this quarter, including walking football, walking netball, seated exercise and multiple target games sessions. This quarter, we delivered 5 programmes in total, consisting of 56 sessions. 2 programmes took place within Perdiswell Leisure centre while the other 3 took place in Fortis Living managed sheltered housing. This enabled us to take the sessions to the participants within their environment, making it easier to attract the target audience and remove the barrier of travelling to sessions.

The programmes achieved a throughput of 387 this quarter. All programmes are now running sustainably moving into quarter 1 of 2018-19.

‘”I lost all my fitness and my idea of coming here is to get some fitness back… it’s getting involved in games, you’re meeting people. It makes you feel happy, it’s great. ”

Keith Lewis (63) – walking football participant who

has recently overcome a heart attack

· So far our Active Ageing offer has engaged 91 older aged people.

· A total throughput of 468 through our Active Ageing programmes.

ACW/AA

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matthew.rogers@freedom-leisure.co.uk

30/03/18

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Wake up with Freedom!

This quarter Active Communities Worcester launched our latest addition to our school sport offer, “Wake up with Freedom!” The programme has been designed to allow us to engage with as many young people as possible in a session, increasing our impact within a school.

The sessions consist of mass exercise to music class, delivered by a freedom leisure fitness instructor. The sessions take place in the morning, either before school, during morning assembly or first break time to ‘wake up’ the children and get them ready for a day of learning. In addition to this, delivering the sessions before school also improves punctuality of the young people as they are arriving prior to the school day commencing just to attend the Wake up with Freedom class.

So far this quarter, we have trialled the sessions in two primary schools in Worcester. Delivering 23 sessions and engaging a footfall of 2,520.

In the first school, we deliver three back to back Zumba sessions within an hour to all year groups within the school, delivering to approximately 180 children each week. The second school, we deliver a boxercise inspired sessions before school which takes place on the playground. This works very well as a location as initially around 30 children come to the session for the duration but other children then join in as they arrive at school.

In Q1 2018-19 we are going back to both of these schools as well as starting a new Wake up with Freedom class in a special needs school.

‘”I think the wake up with Freedom programme is great as the kids are keeping active and really look forward to the sessions ”

Mrs Stoddart – Year 6 Teacher

· Total throughput of 2,520

· Over 210 individual children participating each week

· Providing regular exercise classes within 3 schools next quarter

ACW/AYP

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Tom.Rimmer@freedom-leisure.co.uk

30/03/18