CSP: Yorkshire Sport Foundation
Overview
The development of the Sport for Change project has been one of a wider partnership journey within the overall work area around sport for change. Discussions with the South Yorkshire Police & Crime Commissioner (PCC) started in 2015 following a successful application to the PCC community grant scheme for £5000. As a result of this we offered some support to the PCC office to see if we could help them to use sport as tool to support policing priorities and to provide a new approach to needs-led commissioning. We also wanted to build a robust impact monitoring report to show the impact of the PCC’s investment in the community [which they weren’t doing]. The office of the PCC accepted that we had a unique and interesting proposition and agreed to commission a South Yorkshire programme with no set outcomes or measure other than to focus on the school summer holidays and show us what you can do.
We named the initiative ‘Sport for Change’ and began to build the outcome framework to commission local community sport providers working in each of our districts bringing together local stakeholders and holders of information including local authorities, family services, SY Police, health visitors, colleges and local community sports representatives. The 50/50 funded pot between the PCC and Yorkshire Sport Foundation had created a £40,000 pot to tackle juvenile nuisance during the summer holidays of 2016 with the following characteristics:
- Focussing on the top 20% IMD communities in South Yorkshire
- Robust application process which challenged the applicants on demonstrating impact
- Overlaid Police intelligence on target areas from district commanders and Chief Inspector Jayne Forrester (Community Safety lead).
Two tier assessment process
Tier 1 – District need portfolio created on local need
Tier 2 – Check and challenge group at county level to agree the submitted local plans
Effective use of Insight
In order to make sure that we distributed the Sport for Change funding appropriately we consulted with SY Police and their intelligence services along with PCSOs and district commanders to find targeted locations. Along with this we also facilitated discussions with districts to identify locations, deliverers and a decision board to develop the portfolio of projects. We used the police information to inform the group but to also screen potential applications through the open grant process. The application also asked deliverers to show why and how they wanted to operate their project in relation to the policing priorities for their area. Without this insight the programme wouldn’t have been as targeted and responsive to the needs of the communities involved.
Effective Local Leadership
This project would not have been delivered without the initial project development from Yorkshire Sport Foundation but our value came from providing leadership to influence the opportunities with the PCC and then to bring together the local stakeholders to agree the local process to achieve the overall outcome. It also provided an opportunity for sport to advocate its potential impact to a wider social outcome and to draw funding based on our ability to show how we can lead a consortium of sports projects to deliver it.
Innovation, Impact and Sustainability
The project was built upon proving that the project had made a difference but also be able to provide the story to the PCC office to show what their investment had created. Previously they had not done this and equally as a CSP we had not recorded the project against a set of outcomes. This was done via recording through the VIEWS system, the Sportworks tool, pre and post young people surveys, and deliverer surveys and through case studies. The production of the information as an impact report gave enough confidence in our ability to start discussions about an expanded 2017 project which will likely take an asset-based community development approach.