Youth Sport Trust Programmes

The Youth Sport Trust (YST) provides various schemes and programmes to encourage young people to participate in regular sporting activity in a safe, beneficial and personally enriching environment. This covers young gifted and talented athletes trying to achieve maximal performance right through to playground participation, and also provides for disabled athletes.

The following three examples of these programmes, also known as Talent Pathways, are as follows. They cover, in respective order, Participation, Performance and Leadership.

Multi-skill Clubs provide regular opportunities for young people aged 7 to 11 to take part in a wide range of non-sport specific activities outside of school hours, to promote participation and help develop all-round young athletes.

• They enable young people to develop fundamental movement and sport skills, such as agility, balance, co-ordination, catching and throwing by allowing them to practice in a non sports-specific environment.
• They form part of the player pathway for young people through links to Multi-skill Academies, which build on Multi-skill Clubs and provide additional activities specifically designed for young people who have been identified as gifted and talented.
• Multi-skill Clubs bridge the gap between high quality school sport and community sport and provide the first real ‘club’ experience for young people. They are ‘holding tanks’ which can feed community sport clubs with physically literate young people, encouraging school to club links.
• Multi-skill Clubs should be open and accessible in every way to all young people and fully inclusive in terms of ability disability, gender and ethnicity. The clubs provide excellent opportunities for young people with disabilities to participate in high quality club environments and form an important part of the Paralympic player pathway.

The YST’s programme suggests that through these Multi-skill Clubs, sporting festivals should be implemented within school sport partnerships at Key Stage 1 & 2 levels. As well as assessing current ability levels, festivals give the opportunity for young people to compete from a young age at high quality, organised competition arenas. It is hoped that if these services are provided from a young age, it can instil in the young sportsperson the desire to stay in sport throughout their lives.

“Playground 2 Podium” is the new national strategy for the identification, development and support of talented young disabled athletes, developed by the Youth Sport Trust, Sport England, UK Sport and the British Paralympic Association.

The Playground to Podium framework forms a pathway, which will take young disabled people from PE, through participation, to high level performance and competition.

The ultimate aim of this pathway is to produce our next Paralympians and elite disabled athletes. However it is essential that all young disabled people are able to take part in high quality provision of their choice.

The interventions within the Playground to Podium framework and the PESSYP Disability work strand, collectively aim to support the achievement of a 5 hour offer for young disabled people, and ensure that those with a higher level of ability are identified and are able to access a talent pathway.

The role the School Sport Partnership plays in delivering the “P2P” framework is;

Turning the framework into opportunities for all young disabled people to participate and perform is the responsibility of a large range of sports organisations, but is heavily dependant on strong foundations being laid by School Sport Partnerships.

The four key interventions that School Sport Partnerships are tasked with delivering are:

1. CPD for teachers to develop skills in identifying and supporting ability in young disabled people.

2. Inclusive or dedicated Multi-skill Clubs, to develop the fundamental movement and sport skills of all young disabled people aged 7-11.

3. Multi Sport Clubs for ages 11-18, offering regular out-of-school-hours coaching opportunities to enhance the sporting skills of those young disabled people wishing to progress further in a sporting environment.

4. Identifying Ability Days to bring together those young disabled people identified as showing higher ability in PE and Sport, through PE curricular routes, multi sport opportunities and competitions, to experience a range of high quality coaching environments through which to assess their sporting potential.

PDF download about Playground 2 Podium available at http://www.youthsporttrust.org/downloads/cms/P2P_Information_Sheet.pdf

Sport relies on 1.5 million volunteer officials, coaches, administrators and managers and the Youth Sport Trust plays a major role in supporting their development.

Step into Sport focuses on young people aged 14 to 19, giving them opportunities to become involved in sports leadership and volunteering and encouraging them to continue this into later life.

The programme is funded by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) as part of the national Physical Education and School Sport for Young People (PESSYP) strategy, which is revitalising PE and school sport across the country.

Associated with TOP Link, Step Into Sport encourages leadership skills from a young age, closely linked to existing leadership work in schools such as Junior and Community Sports Leaders Awards (JSLA and CSLA).

A Step Into Sport information sheet is available for download at http://www.youthsporttrust.org/linkAttachments/TOP_Link_info_sheet.pdf

13^th October 2006