- Award Entered:
London Legacy Award
- Parent Organisation:
-
- Project Host Nation:
Waltham Forest
- Overview of Project:
Coping Through Football is a ground-breaking project delivered in London Borough of Waltham Forest since 2007. It demonstrates how two sports charities (London Playing Fields Foundation and Leyton Orient Community Sports Programme) can work with the statutory health service (North East London Foundation Trust) to create a sustainable recovery model for one of society’s most marginalised groups, the long term mentally ill. The project aims to help people diagnosed with enduring mental illness to engage more fully with their current care provision, enhance their mental wellbeing and improve their physical health.
The project’s outcomes are to:
• Raise the group’s self-esteem and confidence
• Improve the group’s interactive skills
• Improve the group’s commitment to participating regularly in physical activity and adopting a healthy lifestyle
Coping Through Football is not a sports project in the traditional sense, it is a social inclusion project which uses football as a tool to engage with a hard to reach group. Alongside the twice weekly football sessions, the project encourages participants to access mainstream activities such as training courses, commercial five-a-side leagues and Football League matches.
Healthy lifestyle workshops focusing on issues such as smoking cessation and healthy eating have been delivered to the service users. Interest in these sessions has increased as the participants have begun to understand the positive impact that a healthy lifestyle could have on their performance on the pitch.
All participants are referred to the project via NELFT and they undergo a physical and mental health assessment before joining the activity sessions. The Project Coordinator, seconded from NELFT, undertakes quarterly interviews with participants as part of a system of robust monitoring and evaluation using recognized assessment tools. A bespoke computer package has been designed to manage the project data.
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Comments
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: 25 Jun 2009 - 14:31 BST
Coping Through Football is one of those projects that puts the needs and outcomes of its participants first. Having witnessed the project first-hand it is quite clear that both the participants and coaches have a real passion for it. This is a great example of a number of agencies and partners coming together to create something extremely positive for a group that, historically, may have been overlooked for sports provision. It is refreshing to see that the primary concern from the partners and agencies involved with this project isn’t whether they are getting the most publicity from it but whether the participants are learning new skills on and off the playing field and if the session is having an influence on them personally. Being shortlisted is great recognition for this project and for the others too. London certainly has a lot of hard-working and passionate people working behind-the-scenes to use sport and activities for the greater good.
: 23 Jun 2009 - 11:37 BST
This exciting and innovative project is all about social inclusion and providing people with the opportunity to regain their confidence. I have witnessed people attending the project make new friends, give up smoking, gain new qualifications and return to work after years of unemployment. It deserves the vote!
: 17 Jun 2009 - 16:42 BST
London Sports Forum for Disabled People fully supports this inclusive project to help people with a mental illness to enage in physical activity. Coping through Football deserves to win the London Legacy Award.
: 16 Jun 2009 - 10:29 BST
I've been down to this project and it was brilliant. I played in goal and had loads of fun - despite letting in quite a few goals!! Everyone's really friendly and you would just think it was a bunch of friends playing football together - not a mental health project.