News

When a dishevelled looking 12-year-old first turned up at his local community boxing scheme in Manchester, project workers were amazed. Here was a lad they had been trying to reach for months without success. But he liked boxing and began coming regularly, often three times a week, to train at the club.

Over time, project workers operating alongside the boxing coaches began to develop a rapport with the boy. They knew he was offending, that his mother was working as a prostitute and that he was dabbling with class A drugs.


But as it transpired, this was just the tip of the iceberg. Not only was he himself getting dragged into prostitution, but the boy was also being physically and mentally abused. Before he started boxing he hadn't told anyone - there had never been anyone to tell.

A year down the line and the boy is safe in local authority care. He is off drugs, no longer offending and even at school four days a week. He no longer goes to boxing - but that hardly matters.

Although striking, this is by no means an isolated example of the effect sport can have on the lives of vulnerable young people. In Penryn, an area of Cornwall that experiences significant rural deprivation, a summer holiday scheme at the local sports college helped to reduce reported incidents of antisocial behaviour to zero over three years.

Similarly, opening a community sports hall in a deprived part of Sunderland contributed to a 57 per cent reduction in reported youth offending on the neighbouring estate within a year.

Before these initiatives antisocial behaviour had been rife in both places and was a major source of tension within the respective communities. These are just two examples of an increasing number of projects that, through sport, provide opportunities for socially excluded groups and individuals to engage more positively with their community.

To date, provision of this sort has tended to be ad hoc - reliant on additional funding within designated sports action zones or from successful applications to the likes of the Football Foundation or Sport England's active community development fund. Despite an increasing acceptance of its potential, sport has yet to become embedded as part of the wider social agenda.

Now, however, local authorities are being encouraged to use sport in a more structured way to meet their local public service agreement (LPSA) targets. The carrot of a government grant - averaging between £1m and £9m for each authority - is being dangled to entice the design and delivery of initiatives that meet key local priorities. Funding will be released in three instalments, with the final payment - received at the end of the three-year period - conditional on the successful achievement of these targets.

Although sport is not a compulsory part of an LPSA, there can be a crucial correlation between the work done by social services professionals and their sporting counterparts. Together with their partners in schools, sports governing bodies and in clubs, sports development departments at local authorities have the resources to deliver activities that target disaffected and disengaged youngsters.

Where sports professionals often struggle, however, is in finding out exactly where and at whom to target this provision so that it has the desired impact. Social services departments and youth offending teams have this knowledge. At the same time, however, while many of their clients might benefit from involvement in sport, social services and YOTs do not always have the capacity to deliver the activities themselves.

Sue Appleton, senior investment manager at Sport England, believes the sort of collaboration required under LPSAs could facilitate a much closer relationship between community sport and social care.


"It is about local authority services working together at the strategic level and isolating areas where delivery can be multi-agency," she says. "The exact roles and responsibilities of those departments involved in delivery must also be clearly defined."

Mainstream sporting provision often excludes certain youngsters, who either can't afford it or are banned from taking part because of their antisocial behaviour. Interagency collaboration can overcome this problem, targeting specific activities at particular groups and individuals.

In Hastings, East Sussex, officers from the local YOT work with coaches from the Brighton Bears basketball team to deliver a basketball coaching scheme for at-risk youngsters. While coaches deal with technical matters and lead activity, the YOT supports youngsters when personal issues spill over into situations that might otherwise lead to their exclusion from the activities.

Meanwhile, the government runs a national sports-based social inclusion programme called Positive Futures, aimed at marginalised 10- to 19-year-olds in the most deprived areas of the country.

The aim of this scheme is not to produce the next David Beckham or Kelly Holmes, but to help young people develop confidence, along with social, teamwork and leadership skills. In helping them to feel more positive about themselves and the communities in which they live, Positive Futures has also proven to be an effective crime prevention strategy.

Chris Dare, national community youth work co-ordinator for rehabilitation agency Nacro, is convinced that for sport to be effectively used as a tool of social engagement, the work done by social services professionals after young people have become involved in sport is crucial.

"In some cases, just getting a young person to turn up regularly, over a period of time, is a major success," he says. "From here, we can let them know about further education and training programmes. In some cases it is just about getting a young person back into school."

Sustaining these projects is the key to lasting success, Dare adds.

"We always have to face the problem of what happens when the money runs out," he says. "In order that the community will continue to benefit, it is vital that the community itself takes ownership of the activity from the start. As they get older, many youngsters who have previously been involved in the activity can move into coaching and leadership roles. In this way, the next generation of participants are catered for and the young leaders themselves have a positive role within their community."

If the use of sport to tackle youth offending and social exclusion is to become an established part of the system, then the staff working in social services departments, in sports development units and in YOTs must take ownership of the idea. Only they can relate such strategies to the particular needs of their clients.