16 Jan New Three Year Programme To Improve Health of Young Offenders Through Football
2015 will see the launch of an exciting new three year project for Healthy Stadia working with young offenders and those on the cusp of offending in Liverpool, UK. This project will work with Everton Football Club’s charitable foundation, Everton in the Community, to develop a bespoke healthy lifestyle and motivational programme using the power of sport, in particular football, to educate on key lifestyle risk factors, including: physical activity, healthier diet, the dangers of smoking tobacco, and, risks associated with alcohol.
Entitled ‘Healthy Goals: Better Lives’, the project is one of 64 health and wellbeing initiatives to have been funded through the £3m Healthy Liverpool Community Grant Scheme that has been administered by Liverpool Clinical Commissioning Group for 2014-2017.
Healthy Stadia will develop a healthy lifestyle programme that will be delivered to cohorts of young offenders over a three year cycle who are participants in Everton In The Community’s award winning ‘Safe Hands’ programme. Using a ‘train the trainer’ approach, community sports coaches will be trained to educate young people about lifestyle risk factors, and will also receive specialist training on techniques concerning improving self-esteem, goal setting and motivation. Coaches will be trained by health promotion experts and qualified motivation training experts, and will be equipped with a 10 week training programme, including a toolkit, weekly training modules with practical exercises, handouts for participants and a monitoring framework. The course will be delivered at a number of sports settings within the city, using a classroom for theoretical tuition, and 5-a-side pitches and gym settings to bring healthy lifestyle and motivational messages to life through physical activity and sports coaching.
The decision to address this target group through sports inspired education was based upon considerable evidence showing that young offenders have lower levels of health literacy, higher incidence of physical and mental health problems, and higher levels of risky behaviour in relation to substance misuse. In addition to educating young offenders in lifestyle behaviour change techniques, Healthy Stadia will work with the social enterprise ‘Coaching and Community Support’ to develop and deliver four sessions on self-esteem, goal setting and motivation techniques.
For more information on this project, contact: Matthew Philpott, matthew.philpott@healthystadia.eu
