Let's get Sunderland out of Red - Steering Group

Context, Intent and Target Group

Background Information

We launched a steering group to bring together key stakeholders across the city who were working largely in isolation from the SGO team despite having similar shared goals. We had the vision of 'together we are stronger' and initially wanted to connect in order to learn what each representatives' current work programmes looked like, what their priorities were, where there was potential scope for collaboration and where there was duplication and consequently wasted productivity.

What was the aim of work?

The aim of the work was to bring together a variety of stakeholders including local deliverers, Together for Children (Sunderland's Children's services department), Public Health, Active Sunderland, HAF deliverers, our Youth Sport Trust Development Manager, Headteachers, RISE (Active Partnership), School Games Organisers, Sunderland City Council and wider parties such as representation for the Arts and Culture team.

Which outcome(s) did it focus on?

• 5. To advocate and engage key stakeholders on the value of School Games to support local provision and improve the experience for young people and their families

Which expectation(s) did it meet?

• Collaborating with key partners to inform the local and county offer to tackle inequalities and ensuring inclusive and safe practice.
• Developing strategies to improve knowledge and understanding of the School Games for key stakeholders.
• Work with schools to maintain and grow their active engagement in School Games.
• Develop a communication plan to boost the profile of the host site and demonstrates the value of school sport to other schools in the area.
• Planning for and increasing delivery of 60 active minutes for every child.
• Provide an offer of professional development and communication for all schools to increase their understanding and increase their provision of 60 active minutes.
• Work intensively with a minimum of two low engagement schools to improve their understanding, engagement and access of the School Games offer.
• Co-ordinate and signpost schools and young people to a programme of relevant training of leadership, coaching, volunteering and officiating experiences.

Community links

• Active Partnerships
• Community sports clubs
• Headteacher group
• Leisure providers
• Local authority
• Multi Academy Trust leads
• Public health lead
• SEND leads / SENCO

Intent

The initial intent and long term strategy was to work together to improve data (currently listed as red) for Sunderland in relation to emotional well being, physical health, child obesity and other key indicators to a child's overall health performance.

We also wanted to gain a better understanding of the 'state of the nation' in Sunderland and wanted more people to know who we are, what we do and the difference we make.

Target group

• All School Staff
• All Young People
• Senior Leaders
• Targeted Groups of Young People

Aligns to Schools Games Intents of:

• Engage new/target groups of young people (tackling inequalities)
• To engage/influence wider stakeholders

Implementation

The Steering Group meet half termly. These meetings allow the stakeholders to update, connect and invite colleagues to work together. The terms of reference for the group centre around collaborative working, informing the group of current projects, identifying scope for stakeholders to work together and preventing duplication, Ultimately we are all striving to improve the physical health, emotional well being and accessibility to a better life across all ages in Sunderland.

Impact

The impact

The image above is the HAF coordinator for Sunderland presenting at our PE conference. She used our conference as a platform to promote HAF hosting opportunities for schools. The outcome was 5 new host schools with HAF operating from their school site providing a more accessible geographical split across the city.

The annual PE and School sport conference has moved away from being a SGO event to our event. Although the SGO's still organise and are the lead coordinators of the conference, the steering group widely acknowledge the importance of the conference and offer their time and services free of charge. Public Health will deliver the annual statistics and a follow up workshop providing networking tasks. The headteachers will deliver case studies. The HAF providers will do sports challenges in the marketplace and even our Active Partnership who list Friday as a non working day will attend to help sort attendance registers, distribute merchandise and help with the awards ceremony.

Active Sunderland were launching an Active Schools charter and they decided to use the School Games Mark as a pre-requisite. Without the Steering Group, the charter would have been a likely duplication of the School Games Mark and both Active Sunderland and the SGO team would have faced challenges trying to encourage schools to complete both. It is likely that the Sunderland Charter may have gained more engagement than the School Games Mark due to its local positioning.

Another development via the Steering Group has been connections that have been made via members of the group with people I would never have known existed. We have formed a new relationship with one of the activity deliverers who has a remit around connecting communities to park runs, We have recently ran a junior version in a local park where with the support of the activity deliverer we marked out the route and gave local primary schools the opportunity to have a taster session of a local junior park during the school day. The aim was to signpost people living in the local area to the weekend park run . As an SGO, it also helped us to gain useful insight in to the poor fitness levels of children across a range of year groups and potential topics of discussion in forthcoming network meetings.

Other success stories have included our annual park colour run when the whole committee offered support. One of the external deliverers sought sponsorship to fund the paint, another provided equipment from the HAF summer colour runs. Together for Children provided a free workforce in return for distributing leaflets ahead of the summer holidays at our events and Sunderland City Council supported with writing the risk assessment and securing an event permit.

Challenges

Despite being a successful steering group we have less than 10 members. This helps productivity in meetings because each member is allowed floor space to inform the other members of a current 'state of the nation'' where they operate including success stories, quick wins and challenges. However, the headteacher pictured above (who has led is school to YST Beacon school status) is now retiring and recruiting a headteacher who will be just as strong an advocate will be challenging. However, we do have a couple of candidates in mind and are trying to focus on a new start as a new opportunity for the group to grow.

Sustainability

The group has been operating for eight years now. I feel that it has created momentum and status as more people have joined. Sometimes the agenda is small but actually that allows us to share key information. We never struggle to fill the time and understanding the area we operate in is key. We do annual SWOTS and target set to constantly evaluate and check that the group is fit for purpose. The key is that everyone is benefiting from being on the group.

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