Summary
Wee FiT: Friendship inclusion Training for children and young people with intellectual / physical and sensory disabilities / autism and their carers. We will designed and delivered a range of rugby based fun activities to provide a bespoke programme for each age group.
What tri Wee FiT did
We targeted a diverse range of individuals and groups. We worked in partnership with local and national agencies in the areas of: supported education, retired rugby players, existing youth and adult rugby projects and clubs, schools’ sports leader programmes, care and support organisations.
We have now captured the commitment of several rugby clubs nationally and will continue to encourage their capability to deliver sessions in full collaboration with carers.
We have developed strong links and are sharing best practice models for unified sport with Winning Scotland Foundation and are now looking to co develop our club and coaching unified rugby education resources
We have also secured a working partnership with English Premiership Rugby Club ‘Worcester Warriors’ and RNIB in Scotland
This has resulted in a new exciting rugby oppprtunity:
• Hugby: unified Rugby for players with visual impairments.
This will has created even more opportunities to get more people to get involved and for more carers to get a break.
We are fully committed to continue to find, develop and nurture individuals that would not normally have access to a structured, safe and equitable unified sporting opportunity.
What Trust Rugby International has learned
Project Planning: Our biggest learn from this project is that we need to plan a robust programme Tha is not relent on individuals or partners. This has been highlight by the fact that we didn't manage to get R4All off the groins as we were heavily reliant on some key volunteers and parents at then outset and due to circumstance beyond our or their control we lost their input and drive for this element and it overstretched our our resources and therefore was not successful
How Trust Rugby International has benefitted from the funding
Building or skills, knowledge and capacity: Overviewed the past 4 years with the support a from Shared Care - Better Breaks we have identified our key value we can offer communities AND what we are not good at and therefore we are now in a better position to take tri on it's next stage of development with our parents, carers and players
Project Outcomes
Outcome
We have fully established a network of confident community coaches in their local clubs to sustain the growth of the programme
We bench marked beginning, middle and end with numbers participating on the programme we also continued our use video documentary
Results
We introduced our wee clan programme to 6 new areas as well as to our existing areas in the central belt. Through introduction meetings with rugby club committees and coaches we secured commitment to work in long term partnerships in these areas
We found that blocks that were inhibiting some clubs and coaches from fully embracing our work were the limiting assumptions we have been addressing since we started this work in 2012 to address this we delivered our coach education sessions both in house to tri coaches and integrated and with our key partnership clubs to fully support all the new development coaches in to the tri Way coaching with ease and fun
Case study
TeamWorX has been amazing for our son. Since starting he has made invaluable friendships, is learning to become more independent and learning new skills. If he had stayed at college he would have finished this year with no where to go and nothing to do, which was a worry for us. TeamWorX has given his life purpose allowing him to contribute to society. We absolutely recommend TeamWorX to those with additional needs to fulfill their potential and live meaningful lives. - Parent
It’s great meeting new people, I love socialising after the games. I know have new friends – Player
Outcome
We will have fully established out of school and weekend sessions for all our age groups in all our new areas, running as an integrated programme in existing clubs
Results
We have not managed to fully achieve this outcome as we have not managed to fully create a bridge between working in schools to attract interest to join in after school club activities.
This was despite us providing transport as well as running very successful in school activities . We found that although there are certain agencies that would fully welcome out specialised delivery in school they would not extend there collaboration beyond school
This has led to a very disappointing take up in joining our rugby clubs.
This said we have managed to establish an under 20 development group nationally and will be continuing work with young people in transition age group to grow this work.
We will now be focussing tri's efforts on 16 years plus work and at the same time through our coach and club education work will encourage rugby coaches of younger age groups to extend their reach to include younger children with ID and or autism.
Outcome
We have managed to integrate carers into the local rugby club set up so they feel part of the wider rugby community
Results
We used our lifestyle support coaches to work with groups of carers and gather on going feedback about we can do better or keep doing more of
We held a series of meetings with the key clubs and get their commitment to work together to attract this new audience into their community
We now have three parents on the Board of Trustees for Trust Rugby International and are now developing social committee to further develop and hold regular carer/ parent meetings and activity nights including looking at the concept of developing CLANBA samba Clan supporters band!
Case study
As parents, we have always encouraged our son to look beyond his disability and have sought for him to access the same opportunities as everyone else. Since joining tri, he has not only been able to fulfil his passion for playing rugby but has gone on to become involved in TeamWorX where he has gained valuable work skill training. Now he works part time as an assistant coach, training the next generation of the Clan. Parent
Unified rugby has given our son opportunities he would never have had otherwise; he has developed and thrived though the experience. His fitness and activity levels, his social skills and his organisation skills have all benefitted. Parent