Midlands Psychology Keep Achieving Project wins National Lottery funding
Midlands Psychology is delighted to announce their successful bid for National Lottery funding from Sport England to help Staffordshire families whose children have autism to become more active.
Four out of five primary school children do not get the recommended amount of daily exercise of 60 minutes a day, and miss out on the benefits it brings. This is especially true for children from lower income families, who may be disadvantaged by a number of barriers that prevent them from undertaking physical activity. The bid by Midlands Psychology’s autism service focused specifically on children who have autism because of their significant difficulties accessing sports and leisure opportunities.
As Head of Autism Services at Midlands Psychology, Dr Naida Southall, explained, “Many children who have autism find sports and leisure activities really challenging. This is often because of factors to do with their autism, such as the social or sensory difficulties they experience. As a result, they can end up feeling that these activities are not for them. We see many children and young people that spend most of their leisure time in their bedrooms. This funding is fantastic, because it will enable us to help them and their families to make some real changes and engage in some fun activities that they will hopefully take forward into the future. Our team will be working hard to make activities as autism-friendly and family-friendly as possible – the aim is to involve parents and children in a whole-family programme”.
The Midlands Psychology Keep Achieving Project is one of the first projects to receive investment from a £40 million National Lottery fund that Sport England has dedicated to helping families become more active together.
The fund is a key part of Sport England’s focus on helping young people to have an enjoyable experience of sport and physical activity so that they develop a positive attitude towards being active at an early age and continue being active in later life.
Sport England are providing funds to organisations so that they can help families get active together. This is important because the evidence shows that parents and close family members can have a big impact on children’s experiences. As well as giving children direct access to sporting opportunities, Sport England research shows that parents are also significant role models in helping their children get active – because how a parent behaves impacts what a child sees as important.
Parents who are active themselves, and enjoy it, can encourage positive feelings about exercise and its value in their children. Yet many parents lack the skills or confidence to take part in sport with their children as they fear they cannot keep up. For example, if adults don’t know how to swim or lack confidence on a bike, this has a knock-on impact on the activities they feel they can do as a family and how much they encourage children to take part.
Each of the funded projects will work to address this by building adults’ confidence around getting active with their children, and by providing experiences for families that are enjoyable, convenient and low cost.
As part of their background research for the project, Midlands Psychology Autism Service spoke to parents and children who use their services to find out their views about the kinds of sports and leisure activities they would like to be able to use and the kinds of barriers they experience accessing them. The team is dedicated to removing these barriers, whether they are emotional, physical or social, and working with local providers to offer fun, accessible programmes for families in the localities where they live.
Keep Achieving is an energetic pathway programme designed around the needs of children who have autism and their families with the aim of supporting them to become more physically active and remain so, in line with their physical, mental and individual development needs. The project aims to support around 700 children and adults over 3 years across South Staffordshire.
Sport England’s Director of Children and Young People Jayne Molyneux said:
“It’s not right that four in five children don’t get enough exercise and are missing out on the health benefits it brings. Just by seeing their parents being active, children can be inspired to do the same, and if they have an enjoyable experience they’re far more likely to continue as an adult.
Parents have many demands on their time, and often lack the confidence to get active with their children. That’s why Sport England is working hard to make getting active with your children an easy choice.
With this new National Lottery funding, Midlands Psychology will be able to engage these children who have autism and their families in a range of activities including sport and leisure, and as a result, inspire and empower them to become active together, helping to increase levels of confidence, self-esteem, social skills, mental health and general wellbeing”.
About Sport England
Sport England is a public body and invests up to £300 million National Lottery and government money each year in projects and programmes that help people get active and play sport.
It wants everyone in England, regardless of age, background, or level of ability, to feel able to engage in sport and physical activity. That’s why a lot of its work is specifically focused on helping people who do no, or very little, physical activity and groups who are typically less active – like women, disabled people and people on lower incomes.
About Midlands Psychology
Midlands Psychology is a not-for-profit social enterprise. The autism service provides services for children across South Staffordshire and has done so successfully for the past eight years, working as part of the family of NHS providers. Helen Boss, Chief Operations Officer for Midlands Psychology explained, “As a social enterprise, our role is to improve the psychological health and emotional well-being of Staffordshire children and families and to contribute to the development of a healthier community overall. We take this commitment really seriously. Just one example is our reinvestment of all surplus monies back into the community to develop additional services and facilities for local people. We have a great record of doing this.
We are recognised as a leader in commissioned services for children with autism and their families. In March 2014 we were announced winners of the NHS Lean Healthcare award for ‘Best Impact on Patient Experience’, and in April 2014 we were announced winners of the category for ‘Clinical Excellence’ and ‘Innovative Family Support’ by the National Autistic Society – gaining an unprecedented two awards from them”.
For more information about Midlands Psychology and the Sport England project, please visit the website http://www.midlandspsychology.co.uk/ or contact:
Helen Boss: Tel 01785 748447
Mark Axler: Tel. 07960 472 970