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This week is National Inclusion Week, an initiative started by our friends at Inclusive Employers to celebrate inclusion and to make changes that build workplaces where everyone can thrive.

This year the theme is 'Now is the time', but what does this mean exactly?

Basically, that there’s no moment like the present to take action and to make those practical steps in your organisations that embed inclusion and create a sense of belonging.

This really is one of my favourite weeks of the year!

‘Being inclusive’ is one of the guiding values for the work we do at Sport England and it highlights a collective commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in sport and physical activity.

But we don't approach our commitment to EDI alone, because Moving to Inclusion is an initiative by all the home nations sports councils.

Its purpose is to provide resources and support for physical activity and sport organisations moving towards a more diverse, inclusive and socially responsible sector.

These commitments include an opportunity for self-reflection and continual improvement, which is key in our compromise to keep progressing and living by the values we want to promote.

A bit of history

The Moving to inclusion Framework was created to replace the former ‘Equality Standard - A Framework for Sport’ following a review and consultation with the sport and physical activity sector back in 2021, and it was later soft-launched in Autumn 2023.
 

The Framework guides organisations on developing inclusive practice through self-reflection and continuous improvement using the Moving to Inclusion Diagnostic Toolkit.

Through this self-reflection tool, our aim is simple: to embed equality, diversity and inclusion through incorporating action planning, implementation and review into an organisation’s everyday work.

It is important to note that the diagnostic tool is not mandatory to complete, or part of any performance management for partner-organisations' funding conditions in England. 

Benefits for everybody

In any case, and whichever way you choose to start your inclusivity journey, we believe there are benefits to joining our Moving to Inclusion community:

• This framework enables your organisation to break down the areas around inclusion to make it more manageable and realistically achievable to embed change.
• The process is broken down into five pillars: Culture, Leadership, Experience, Relationship and Communication.
• The self-diagnostic tool within the Moving to Inclusion Framework will help you assess where your organisation is now on its EDI journey and consider where you might need to focus effort and make further improvements.
• The Framework provides practical suggestions and resources to help you drive continuous improvement in your organisation. The reason for this is that a greater focus on EDI will benefit the whole business, including staff satisfaction and retention, reputation, diversity of workforce and thought, growth in participation and membership, innovation, better resilience and increased business opportunities.
• Partners who are funded by Sport England may be able to access mentor support upon completing their diagnostic.  
• As Moving to Inclusion evolves, it will create a learning culture and community to be part of.

Any organisation (either inside the sport sector or outside) can undertake the self-reflection process and benefit from the online resources that support it.

To get an idea of the impact it is currently having, check out this infographic for April 2024-March 2025.

Leading change on EDI in our sector

Sport England (and UK Sport) have introduced Diversity and Inclusion Action Plans (DIAPs) as a mandatory requirement of the Code for Sports Governance.

DIAPs set out the ambitions and practical steps that organisations in the sport and physical activity sector will take to achieve greater diversity and create inclusive cultures.  

The plans are applicable to Tier 3 organisations, with the aim to improve representation and inclusion on boards, in senior leadership teams and throughout the wider organisation. 

To date, Sport England and UK Sport have signed off 116 DIAPs that are now with partners to deliver on the actions within their plans and to improve diversity within their organisations and beyond.  

Organisations funded by Sport England will find that Moving to Inclusion provides additional, complementary and enduring support for their DIAP processes.

The themed pillars within Moving to Inclusion will help those organisations refresh their DIAPs and they may choose to incorporate the actions arising from their self-assessment within their own plans.

This National Inclusion Week (and every other week in the calendar, if you ask me) we all have a role to play in changing our behaviour, championing inclusive practices and challenging discrimination.

Collectively, we can create the conditions that support a kind, welcoming and nurturing environment for everyone to lead healthier and happier lives and we hope Moving to Inclusion can help you in that journey.
 

It’s undeniable that the Lionesses’ recent triumphs and the professionalisation of the women’s game, the strong performance of the men’s team and the fact that the number of girls watching and playing football has doubled in recent years, has made the country proud.

We know that the scale of grassroots football in England means that the sport is well positioned to influence people and communities in tackling inequalities in sport and physical activity.

So because of all of these reasons, we thought that our case study with The Football Association (FA) would be a great way to close our series of blogs.

The FA is the National Governing Body for one of the country’s most popular sports and receives significant funding through Sport England’s system partner investment.

Keeping Your Child Safe in Sport Week is a campaign by the NSPCC Child Protection in Sport Unit (CPSU) that runs from 7 to 11 October 2024, highlighting the key role local communities can play in safeguarding children and young people when taking part in sport and physical activity.

The CPSU is one of Sport England's key safeguarding partners and we’re really proud of this collaboration.

Listening - the first step towards change

We all know that sport and physical activity are great ways for children and young people to learn new skills, support their wellbeing, reach their potential and make friends, but do you really know how important you are when it comes to keeping children and young people safe while being active?

I am talking about volunteers, spectators, helpers, family members, friends and carers – we all need to make sure children have a great time and feel safe when playing a sport.

Many of us are familiar with historic cases of abuse and learning from these is vital to inform practice.

Valuable insight has been gained from Sport England's recent partnership with the National Working Group (NWG) on the Voices in Sport project, which has developed a series of resources in collaboration with survivors and people with lived experience of abuse highlighting the real, lifelong impact of these incidents on their lives.

There is a common theme when you listen to survivors and those with lived experience of abuse and harm: the missed opportunities for intervention and the devastating lifelong consequences brought to each of them.
 

Some of the testimonies include expressions like: “The signs were there” or “If only someone had listened, believed and responded.”

So now we must do everything we can to prevent future harm, and it is vital that we all know what signs to look out for and how to support creating a culture where – if you have even a slight concern – you feel you can speak up, ask questions and/or raise concerns.

Sadly, abuse in sport is not something that just happened in the past, because children and young people are still suffering the impact of having been harmed.

Joint efforts to change the future

The NPCC CPSU Case Data Tool Report – based on trends established from anonymised yearly data collected from 39 participating national governing bodies regarding cases that have reached a threshold (cases involving a statutory service, like children's services or police) – identified that between the period between October 2022 and October 2023, 91% of reported incidents occurred less than two years prior to the disclosure.

The good news is that there are many things we can do to reduce the risk of harm to young people and this is exactly the aim of Sport England in its partnership with funded bodies in the sector like the NSPCC CPSU and the NWG.

Recent investments of £14.83m of National Lottery funding into the network of Sports Welfare Officers are providing additional local support to this role within clubs, signposting organisations to the right advice and guidance, and raising awareness of campaigns such as Keeping Your Child Safe in Sport throughout the year.

Play Their Way is also a good example where, through collaboration, the sector has created a campaign for child-led coaching, giving the youngest a voice.

It can’t be emphasised enough how much we need to support sport to develop a culture at grassroots level where talking about the welfare of children is the norm. 

Sadly, many people walk away from a club or activity when something is not quite right.

That may be inappropriate behaviour from a coach, a volunteer or a parent, a concern, a doubt, a feeling of uneasiness or realising behavioural changes in a child.

Children and young people’s wellbeing is fundamental to their enjoyment of being active and the CPSU has done a phenomenal job in putting together a great array of ways to get involved including a resources library, short courses and animations to name a few.

I invite you to look at these materials, so we can all learn to play our role to keep children safe in our sector.
 

I’ve always loved power hockey and played it since I was eight. 

Power hockey is the powered-wheelchair version of field hockey, which started at Liverpool's Greenbank Sports Academy in 2000.

This is the only contact sport for electric wheelchair users and in March 2021 a governing body - GB Power Hockey Association (CIO) - was born.

A disabled sport by disabled people 

It’s the best sport ever as it makes me feel like I have no disability and I can focus on just enjoying it, so imagine my delight when in 2001 I was offered to become a trustee by Gerry Kinsella, chairman of the charity and creator of the sport.

This opportunity meant I could help develop the sport nationwide, something which is key to my current role as media secretary at the charity.

I also helped organise and run power hockey’s inaugural tournament, held in May this year, at the sport’s home of Greenbank Sports Academy.

It was an action-packed day with teams from around the country competing in front of hundreds of spectators.

I think it is safe to say that without the role of disabled people within power hockey, the sport wouldn’t exist and I’m proud of having helped laid the foundations for this exciting and up-and-coming sport to prosper and immensely improve disabled people’s lives.

How does Sport England support our work?

Funding from Sport England has enabled the Greenbank Project, working in partnership with the GB Power Hockey Association, to promote and develop this great new sport.

The funding has aided the creation of four new hubs in England - in Chester-Le-Street, Gloucester, Middlesbrough and Burton Upon Trent - and the further development of the Liverpool hub.

The hubs - which will train teams to compete in different leagues and championships - each have eight power hockey chairs stored, ready for players to use in power hockey and power football weekly sessions.

The funding has also paid for the role of the Greenbank Power Hockey business development manager to support the development of the hubs.

The officer has introduced the games of power hockey, and sometimes power football, to the hubs by organising test sessions in each venue before the hubs start.

This figure has also developed the local partnership, which is crucial to the hubs' success and is supporting the volunteer force to run these centres.

The funding has also enabled the development of the chair themselves.

They count with a shooting mechanism that can propel the hockey ball out of the chair using two electromagnets and the players can tackle each other safely due to front bumpers, more commonly used to protect walls from forklift trucks.

The chairs are made by Powersport Engineering, a community interest company, which took over making the chairs from Greenbank in 2020.

The project has enabled the social enterprise to flourish and develop through the turbulent Covid period and has also enabled disabled people to return to playing sports after the pandemic.

Power hockey and power football players were isolated for a prolonged period during the pandemic due to their vulnerability, but the hubs enabled the players to come out and start playing sports again in a safe environment.

Sport England has also supported the sport by providing a case officer who helped shape and link the project with other key organisations.

Together, we’ve made power hockey a sport with the necessary infrastructure and workforce to thrive and one, more importantly, with a truly exciting future to look forward to.

This is something for all lovers of sport, not just the disabled community, to celebrate.
 

The sports sector is open and in agreement to the principle that we need to be more inclusive, especially with underrepresented groups such as ethnically diverse communities. 

A contentious topic, however, is the one around setting targets to support those inclusive goals.

The argument against targets is that they can be a 'check-box exercise' and that recruitment is happening simply to fill a quota, so the concern is that boxing off ethnicities can be counterproductive and seen as tokenistic or artificial.

However, our view at Sporting Equals is that being target-driven starts a movement in the right direction.

Targets help accelerate workforce diversity that will naturally flourish once a seed is planted so, for us, setting targets is essential to driving change.

We also need to be clear on the difference between 'targets' and 'quota', because targets are set for an organisation to work towards, rather than just agreeing on a fixed number of people from a certain group to be recruited.

So how do we do this?

For the Race Representation Index (RRI) we use the census data as the baseline for setting representation targets.
 

The RRI looks at workforce data for national governing bodies (NGBs) and key leadership groups: the board, the senior management team, the professional coaches, the paid players and the officials.

What we do, by looking at these key leadership positions, is create a top-down approach for diversity.

The NGBs that have diverse leadership will be more aware of the lived experiences of ethnically diverse people and how to open talent pathways to be more inclusive.

The RRI was conceived by the Sports Monitoring Advisory Panel (SMAP), a group of black athletes, coaches, retired sports people and administrators that regularly hold the sports sector to account over their Black Lives Matter-inspired pledges.

SMAP was indeed born out of the Black Lives Matter movement and gathered momentum during the pandemic to ensure sport becomes progressively more inclusive, rather than making tokenistic gestures and promises. 

The current SMAP is made up of Densign White, who chairs the panel, Darcy Bourne, Maggie Alphonsi, Devon Malcolm, Ama Agbeze, Kadeen Cox, Chris Ramsey, Alexandra Rickham, Fiona May and Rodney Hinds, plus Kevin Hylton and myself acting as special advisors to the panel. 

Setting these targets and meeting, or exceeding, them will not only bring in lived experiences to contribute to decision-making, but it will also establish role models and improve visibility of ethnically diverse people in sport.

Seeing people who look like you in leadership positions will only increase the perception that the sport is there for you to play, too.

The RRI and target-setting also allows sport to chart their progress, by telling a story of how the sport has improved and moved on to be more inclusive.

For organisations, it allows transparency and works to win the trust of the public - a collective who are often used to ambiguous targets where anything and everything that is 'diverse' is grouped together.

And it’s precisely that lack of precision that ultimately leads to a lack of diversity.

Sports should look to be reflective of the national population as much as possible, not the sporting population.

And in that sense, the county and regional formal sport set up should reflect the local population.

Because being reflective of the status quo will only perpetuate it and most sports are not yet inclusive enough. But target-setting will help grow it.

So a sport may be predominantly white but by bringing in people who are ethnically diverse, the ripple effect will occur over time.

A great example of using targets is Basketball England, the only NGB to earn an overall A Grade on the RRI so far.

Basketball England took brave, demanding action to achieve this and to be a more inclusive sport for Black and other ethnically diverse communities.

Key steps taken by Basketball England included:

• reviewing policies with an external partner
• developing an equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) committee
• employing an EDI manager
• improving the reporting process for racial discrimination
• adopting an openly anti-racist posture
• promoting anti-racist resources
• quintupling the integrity team so capacity was not an issue.

This resulted in the staff growing from 12% to 25% ethnically diverse in three years, while the board held at 30%. It also resulted in the sport being 34% ethnically diverse.

These actions prove that use of data, setting targets and challenging yourself to meet them will develop a more inclusive and diverse sport.
 

Being active is not just good for our physical health. It has the power to do so much more!

It can, for example, reduce anxiety or stress and improve our confidence or self-esteem.

But when being active it’s important for us to feel safe and confident that our welfare is paramount. That’s why club welfare officers exist.

Club welfare officers are roles undertaken across clubs in England by incredible volunteers who make a vital contribution to community sport.

They are responsible for managing welfare issues and putting safeguards in place in their clubs.

They need to work carefully in a potentially sensitive area, so it’s no surprise that hands don’t always shoot up to take on the role.

But we’re planning to change that and we’ll know we’ve been successful when, as one national governing body of sport (NGB) pointed out, ‘it won’t be the last role filled at a club’s annual general meeting’.

The Whyte Review into British Gymnastics, published in July 2022, spoke to the safeguarding responsibility delegated to volunteers at a regional/local level.
 

Consequently, Sport England published its policy response with UK Sport in January 2023, which included a proposal to fund a new, professional network of sport welfare officers across England.

A proposal grounded in our strategy, Uniting the Movement.

In June 2023, the plan became a reality when our board approved a new investment of £14.83 million from October 2023 until March 2027.

This support will create a network of up to 59 sport welfare officers, based in and employed by the network of 42 Active Partnerships who will promote good practices and safe sport.

But the investment itself is not the story of this blog.

The story is what took place between February and June of this year, and continues now, in order to get to that investment.

Since February I’ve created, led and continue to lead a project group of 28 colleagues from across the sport sector to co-design the sport welfare officers project.

I’m thankful to have the expertise of nine NGBs, six Active Partnerships, the Active Partnerships National Team, the Ann Craft Trust, the NSPCC’s Child Protection in Sport Unit and five Sport England teams.

In case you’re wondering, we all get on great. The teams challenge but support each other and are driven by what’s best for the project.

I’m also especially thankful to have had expertise of the club welfare officers from three NGBs: Badminton England, British Triathlon and Table Tennis England.

They volunteered their time on sunny summer evenings (when they could have been at their clubs rather than at their computers) and I was grateful when they green-lit the project.

While club welfare officers work in their local clubs, the sport welfare officers will mentor and support club welfare officers of their respective Active Partnerships across their county (or sub-region).

They will bring club welfare officers from different sports together to share good practices, prioritise visits to local clubs or events and work closely with other sport welfare officers, NGBs and wider organisations.

They will also connect people working on welfare and safeguarding, both inside and outside sport, but they will not, however, manage cases.

That’ll remain the responsibility of NGBs.

To do this, the sport welfare officers will have relationship building and communication skills, and professional welfare experience.

They will receive support locally from their active partnerships and, centrally, from the Active Partnerships National Team.

They will contribute to a culture of good practice, with safer club environments for those taking part in sport.

In turn, those safer spaces will lead to inclusive, improved experiences for children and adults, and narrowed inequalities in sport.

At Sport England we are ready to step forward and create this change.

It won’t guarantee that club welfare officer roles aren’t the last ones filled in clubs across England, but what matters most is these incredible volunteers will be better supported and connected thanks to the sport welfare officers project, and we'll all be better for it.