The Return of Coaching Communities: putting sport at the centre of a different route into work
For most, being in unemployment is much harder to get out of than just sending out job applications.
The unseen struggles might be finding the confidence to stand in front of a group, learning how to communicate with people they have never met, or discovering that the thing they enjoy doing could actually lead to a job.
This is the thinking behind the return of Coaching Communities, our programme helping unemployed and underemployed adults move towards work in sport and physical activity, with the programme being delivered with Jobcentres and local partners across the West Midlands, and funded through the Adult Skills Fund.
Whilst it’s a new programme, it’s also a familiar name.
We first ran Coaching Communities between 2004 and 2009, using coach education, volunteering and practical experience to help unemployed people develop skills and move towards employment. Starting with a £20,000 budget, it grew into a £750,000 initiative, training over 500 individuals through workshops, assistant coaching courses and placements, earning national recognition and significantly improving local employment outcomes.
A lot has changed since then, but one thing we have continued to see is that sport can give people a reason to engage when a more traditional classroom or employability programme might not.
As our Project Leader Felicity Lee puts it: “Sport can be the tool to take that first step. It can get people into coaching jobs and other jobs in the sector.”
The current programme runs over four weeks. Learners work towards a Level 1 coaching qualification, but the qualification is only part of it. There’s careers advice, mentoring, employability support and practical coaching. Employers are involved during the programme, and learners are guaranteed an employment interview.
That part is important; we don't want learners spending four weeks on a course only to be told to go away and look for a job afterwards. The intention is to connect the learning with actual opportunities. That has meant getting employers involved early and giving learners the chance to see what working in the sector can look like.
One group visited Walsall Football Stadium and met people working in different parts of the sports industry. Some had started out in coaching before moving into other roles.
For Felicity, it was a useful reminder of how much people can discover once they are given the chance to look beyond the obvious.
“That was really nice to see,” she says. “There’s a lot more opportunities.”
What happens in four weeks?
It’s not just a qualification that the learners leave with at the end of the programme.
The learners we've spoken to have mentioned coaching techniques, practical sessions and learning how to run a coaching practice, but they've also talked about things that might not immediately sound like sports training.
One learner said the ice-breakers and communication techniques used on the programme were particularly useful. They weren't all sport-specific, but the learner had already started using them outside the course.
Another said the programme had given them “the confidence to run a coaching practice and learn more about the needs you need to meet.”
And one learner put their experience rather more simply:
“It’s made me want to pursue a career within sport.”
That’s the sort of response we want to hear.
Not because everyone who joins Coaching Communities has to become a coach, but because it shows that the programme can change someone's idea of what they might be capable of doing. The jobs available in sport aren't limited to standing on a pitch with a whistle.
There are opportunities across community sport, schools, clubs, foundations, physical activity and leisure. Meeting people already working in those environments can make those possibilities much easier to understand.
It isn't just about getting people through the door
One of the things we learned from the original Coaching Communities programme was that people aren't necessarily hard to reach, they can simply be hard to engage, which is quite the difference.
Someone who has been unemployed for some time may have had poor experiences of education, may lack confidence or may simply not see another classroom-based course as something that is going to make a difference. That’s where the practical side of sport can help.
Learners have to communicate with each other, they have to work as a group, they have to stand up and deliver, they have to receive feedback and try again. For some people those are small things, but for someone who has lost confidence, they can be quite significant.
That change was something Felicity noticed across the first cohorts.
“You see the whole group and how it came together on the final day,” she says. “The confidence they had at the end… there was no uncertainty across the group at all.”
The numbers matter too
The first cohorts give us some useful early results.
Across Walsall and Wolverhampton, 18 learners took part. 89% completed their qualification first time, while 38% were offered employment straight out of the programme. There are now 20 learners enrolled across the wider programme, with 40% of those who have completed so far moving into employment.
It is still early in the programme, so we are careful about drawing conclusions from the first groups through the door, but employment is the reason the programme exists.
The aim isn't simply to increase the number of people holding a coaching qualification. It is to help people move closer to sustainable employment, whether that means getting a job, gaining more experience, volunteering or progressing into further learning.
For those who don't move straight into work, support continues after the four weeks.
That might mean another conversation about what they want to do, help with applications, further training or finding an opportunity to gain experience.
A thank you that said quite a lot
The most revealing feedback from the learners isn't a statistic at all.
One learner wrote:
“Thank you for giving me this opportunity. I'm grateful and happy with attending the course.”
Another said they had “enjoyed the learning and opportunity.”
Those comments aren't evidence of an employment outcome. They don't tell us whether someone has found a job six months later, but they do tell us something about how the programme has been received by the people taking part.
And for Felicity, there have been moments that have brought that home.
She helped learners with their employer interviews, and some came back afterwards to thank her.
“I actually got a bit emotional,” she says. “It’s like, I didn’t quite expect all of this.”
Her description of what the programme is trying to do is perhaps the simplest one.
“It’s just giving people that haven’t had the chance, the chance to do something good with their situation.”
That’s what we know Coaching Communities can do.
We've used sport in this way before. We learned a lot from the people who took part, from the partners who helped us deliver it and from the employers who gave learners a chance.
The new programme takes those lessons and puts them into a different employment landscape, and the first results are encouraging. More importantly, people are coming away from the programme talking about confidence, opportunities and what they might do next.
And sometimes, that’s where the journey begins.