Sport Unlimited
The Humber Sports Partnership (HSP) have been working very closely with the four unitary local authorities across the Humber sub-region as well as the seven school sport partnerships and a variety of governing bodies of sport to develop a range sport unlimited activities for young people. The partnership has focussed on 10 – 19 year olds and has challenged numerous providers to think innovatively about what activities they can offer to engage semi sporty young people.
The programme has been built around robust consultation with young people and developed into a comprehensive range of activities being offered. All the activity is taking place out of school hours and activities include a mix of both traditional and non-traditional sporting activities, from football and cricket through to cheerleading and street dance. Activities are taking place at a range of settings, including leisure centre’s, sports clubs, school sites, parks and open spaces and all activities have started to run for a minimum of 10 weeks, with the view to ensuring long term sustainability.
The Humber Sport Unlimited programme to date has engaged 5, 332 young people in a variety of high quality informal sports activities. Of those young people participating, 2, 845 have retained during the 10 weeks activity which equates to 53%.
The summer term of year 2 came to a close in July 2009 and young people are now taking up opportunities as part of the autumn term delivery. There have been some successful outcomes but the programme has faced many challenges along the way. The HSP core team and Sport Unlimited Network are keen to meet these challenges with support from the HSP Executive Board.
The HSP network has challenged itself to focus on young people between the ages of 11 – 19 years and this has remained a strong focus through out. In addition, the programme has targeted the ‘semi sporty’ population.