An update from our partner Sheffield City Trust (SCT) on its Health Strategy.
The SCT Health Strategy outlines ‘6 Ambitions’ to deliver a step change in the health and wellbeing of the people of Sheffield
These ambitions are:
Deliver programmes to enable every child in Sheffield to swim and ride a bike
We will find, share and replicate new solutions to inactivity
Young children, families and communities in need will get support to get more active
We actively promote healthy diets as part of a healthy lifestyle
Leisure, culture and entertainment venues are inclusive for all in Sheffield
We will lead by example with an active, healthy and engaged workforce
What have we done against these ambitions in the past month?
We continue to work with partners across the city to better understand the impact of COVID on people and communities and find new ways of working. As the country begins to reopen we will have a better idea of what the needs are and how we can best respond.
“We will find, share and replicate new solutions to inactivity”
Our last update gave some information on our work with care homes across the city. So far we have delivered the SCT exercise card game to 6 care homes – only another 74 to go! Over the coming weeks we’ll be delivering the game to these care homes and sharing the stories and quotes through Sheffcare, SCT and and other care homes social media.
This is part of our long standing work with care homes, supporting them to keep older people active, social and healthy.
We’ve also put together a special exercise video designed for care homes. This video will be used on the big TVs in all common areas for group and individual sessions.
“Deliver programmes to enable every child in Sheffield to swim and ride a bike”
Due to the issues faced by society, and schools, over the last twelve months it is expected that in the region of 8,000 children in Sheffield have had their swimming offer through school provision impacted. This will create a further problem in relation to the percentage of children that leave primary school at the required national average when it comes to swimming.
Working with Swim England, we have designed a safety workshop for children that we are delivering in schools across the city. This is a fun, fact packed activity programme that covers the basic elements of water safety that acts as a training tool. While this doesn’t replace any pool time that has been lost, it is starting to re-ignite the learning they will have touched on over 12 months ago and give them a solid foundation moving forwards.
One school lead commented that “the session saw the children engaged and having fun – it was superbly delivered and allowed to act as positive learning for the children that have missed out on a key learning tool this past 12 months”.
We have also worked in partnership with Speedo to put together 250 starter swim packs for young children as they start on their swim journey. These packs include a swim bag, towel, costume and aid float which we hope will not only allow access to pools within the SCT portfolio but see the floats used during bath time.
These packs are to be used alongside our marketing campaign to promote the concession rate in place as part of our pricing policy. In addition to this, we are going to work with local groups to try and support some general swimming ‘barriers’ that we hope will assist in getting dis-engaged families into a swimming setting.
We will have a specific focus on the BAME community, with a target of over 100 of the packs being distributed to families of BAME origin.
