Positive social impact

Sport and physical activity has the potential to be powerful tool to engage with different communities. This can help to bring about crucial change to create safe spaces and improve social outcomes for children, young people and our communities. These outcomes can be categorised into 4 groups:

• Social, emotional and cognitive capabilities
• Individual achievements and behaviours
• Inter-personal relationships
• Benefits to society

In Greater Manchester (GM), there are many children and young people who we believe could benefit from physical activity-based interventions to help them through difficult situations. This need is evidenced by the stark inequalities found across the 10 boroughs. GM Moving partners are working across the system to co-produce these interventions with young people, for young people.

Young People Forward project

Greater Manchester’s Active Partnership, GreaterSport, have been working with partners to improve the health and wellbeing of young people experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness in Greater Manchester. Thanks to funding from London Marathon Charitable Trust, distributed by Active Partnerships Network to North England and Scotland organisations, around 100 young people experiencing or at risk of homelessness have been able to access physical activity and mentoring opportunities through the Young People Forward programme. Seven projects were created across the four boroughs with the highest levels of youth homelessness in the county. Read about the project, and how it’s supported Greater Manchester’s young people here.

Early Intervention Sport & Youth Justice Board

Sport, in its role as a positive activity, is well placed to take a universal, preventative opportunity to support young people through life choices. Positive activities are considered as having a useful role for developing young people’s resilience and enhancing protective factors (HM Government’s Serious Violence Strategy, 2018). Sport can offer:

• Supervised activity
• Fun and variety
• Pro-social friendships especially for girls
• Activities for normative peer activities
• Positive adult role models
• Support for protective factors such as a safe place, routine activities, setting boundaries, building resilience, a sense of belonging, and a pro-social identity.

In GM, the Early Intervention Sport and Youth Justice Group has been brought together to explore and develop proposals in Greater Manchester for embedding community based sport and physical activity as a viable and effective option to bring about an improvement in individual, community and social outcomes.

The group looks to:

• Ensure emerging GM strategic plans and priorities include a commitment to community sport and physical activity, where appropriate.
• Support partners and sectors to understand and realise the role community sport and physical activity can play in helping them achieve their respective strategic aims and priorities, including;
  • Reducing anti-social behaviour
  • Reducing reoffending
  • Increased individual skills, self-confidence and resilience
• Ensure that the commitment and offer of support is underpinned by evidence, best practice and evaluation from both within Greater Manchester and from across the United Kingdom.