Notts County team up with Nottinghamshire charities to give children with disabilities more opportunities in sport
Lots of families enjoyed playing boccia during the 'We Belong' launch event at The Nest at Meadow Lane
By Callum Wright
Notts County has teamed up with Nottinghamshire charities for a new programme that gives children and young people living with disabilities more opportunities in sport.
‘We Belong’ is a programme designed to give children and young people aged 5-18 living with disabilities a chance to take part in a multitude of different sports and physical activities for free in weekly sessions that encourage a sense of belonging and participation.
The after-school initiative has been set up by Nottingham-based charity Footprints Conductive Education Centre, which aims to improve the lives of children living with mobility and communication difficulties across the East Midlands, alongside the Notts County Foundation and Epic Partners, who run community events across St Ann’s and Sneinton.
Launched at the Nest at Meadow Lane on Thursday, March 6, the event gave families a chance to take part in a multitude of different sports and activities with a chance to interact ahead of the start of the programme on March 13, when the weekly sessions at the Portland Centre in The Meadows will begin.
Stephen Frew, charity manager of Footprints, spoke about the importance of ensuring that every child and young person living with disabilities has a chance to feel included in sport.
“Sport isn’t always great at including people, especially being competitive, everyone should feel included and feel they can excel in sport and this programme is to get everyone to feel that they have a part,” he said.
“The problem with disability sport is that people either see it as a joke or see it as superheroes, but actually there’s everybody in-between who wants to feel included, and the great thing of We Belong is that is enables mum, dad, daughter, grandparents, all to come together and be involved in sport, be equally gifted and equally talented no matter where their starting point is.
“We’ve seen families giggling together, competing together, joining in together – that’s what sport should be and at its best it should be involvement.”
Families at the event took part in multiple different activities such as football, archery and boccia and had a chance to meet other families.
Lucie Gregory, one of the parents attending the event, used to work for Footprints and is now an ambassador for the charity. She spoke about the importance of the events for her son Matthew, who has been attending Footprints since he was one.
“It’s [Footprints] been amazing, he’s [Matthew’s] got so much more strength, his communication, his social ability, just a lot more that he probably wouldn’t have had if he didn’t go for those number of years,” she said.
“There’s nothing really else out there for him so he would love to be able to join in so we’re definitely going to sign up to the programme.”
Notts County foundation says it decided to team up with Footprints and Epic Partners as part of a plan to work more with people with disabilities.
Vicky Spargo, Deputy Sport and Inclusion Manager at the foundation, said: “There shouldn’t be any barriers, sports can be adaptive and should be inclusive, everyone should be able to access some sort of physical activity.
“Sometimes they’re underrepresented and there’s not enough activities for people with disabilities, it’s important that more clubs and more cities have these sort of opportunities.”
The first We Belong event will take place at the Portland Centre on Thursday, March 13 from 4:30-6pm, and will run weekly every Thursday.
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