Summary
The English Federation of Disability Sport commissioned the temporary services of Jessica Skinner to cover the West Midlands and South West as the Regional Engagement Advisor from May 2016 until October 2016 for 3 days a week.
Approach
The role involved working with the County Sport Partnerships in the West Midlands and the South West, as well as other partners, to encourage and promote inclusive practice and positive engagement to ensure disabled people are active for life. The role required Jessica to advise, using EFDS insight, disability leads within CSPs on how they can support disabled people to get active. This included promoting to partners training to enhance their awareness of inclusive activity and communications. It was within Jessica’s role to set up and lead forums (county and regional) to bring both sporting and non-sporting sector stakeholders together to encourage partnership working and a greater awareness of activity taking place within each area.
One of the key things Jessica promoted was the need to engage impairment groups who may not consider themselves disabled and the over 50s, to ensure opportunities were available, something not always considered within the sporting landscape.
Jessica was mentored in this role by Rebecca Gibson. This aspect of our embedded service was free of charge and added value to our client.
Outcome
EFDS were delighted to find a solution that worked for them. We were able to provide high quality staffing resource for a short period of time that would have been difficult to fill otherwise. This maintained a consistent quality of provision that EFDS required for stakeholders in the region.