Children, Young People and Families
Living Sport’s strategic goal for children and young people is to support positive physical activity experiences through our work around schools and education, local communities and families.
Every child in the county has the right to benefit from an active lifestyle starting from early years, into positive school and community settings to enable them to achieve their potential.
We are committed to using sport and physical activity to shape the lives of young people in local communities, through high quality, safe and inclusive offers, not only as participants but also as young leaders and volunteers.
The work of the Children and Young People team is diverse, which includes:
- Supporting our network of education partners to understand physical activity habits through the Sport England Active Lives Survey and develop new approaches to embed innovative physical activity offers.
- Developing our focus around tackling inequalities working with county network of School Games Organisers on targeted events and campaigns.
- Working strategically with PE,School Sport, physical activity and community partners to create collaborative approaches to ensure children and young people lead healthy, active and happy lives.
- Supporting organisations to deliver projects with under-served groups of young people in areas of most need.
- Delivery of youth empowerment projects enabling new provision to be shaped and led by young people.
- Supporting local families to have increased opportunities to improve wellbeing in family orientated activity.
- Youth voice to understand the needs, motivations and barriers that young people encounter.
- Ensuring safeguarding is embedded in all the projects that we deliver, and minimum operating standards are met by funded organisations.
There are around seven million children aged 5 to 15 years in England, and more than half are not doing the recommended daily amount of physical activity.
Data from the recent Active Lives Children and Young People survey shows that across England only 47.2% of children and young people (3.4 million) are meeting physical activity guidelines of 60 minutes per day. Around a third (30.1% or 2.2 million CYP) are doing less than an average of 30 minutes a day. Latest local data for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough can be seen here.
Our main focus for Children and Young People work is to engage with underserviced groups of young people who are more likely to be inactive, and working with partners to co-produce and develop youth-led physical activity initiatives through Youth Voice.
What is Youth Voice?
Youth Voice means listening to children and young people and involving them in decision-making to create the types of experiences young people want. By embracing Youth Voice and allowing young people to have a say in shaping sport and physical activity, we can help to make opportunities more relevant, more fun, and enable young people to support their peers to be more active.
It’s about creating opportunities for the ideas, opinions, knowledge and experiences of young people, in all their diversity, to inform and shape decisions and what we do as an organisation.
What impact can Youth Voice have?
By involving Youth Voice from the inception of projects, which are designed with and by young people, the projects are more likely to lead to sustainable opportunities in local communities. The projects will more closely meet the needs of the young people involved, through positive experiences.
Youth Voice can also help us better understand and address some of the barriers young people face.
Living Sport holds the Youth Engagement Partnership Youth Voice Award for our commitment to inclusive practice with children and young people. Awarded by Cambridgeshire County Council.
Ways to listen to Youth Voice:
- Children and Young People consultation – taking time to understand young people and report back
- Utilising digital technologies for engaging young people
- Co-production of projects and events with young people for young people
- Establishing young ambassadors at a sports club or physical activity group
- Linking with the Living Sport Youth Community regarding project proposals
Youth Voice Toolkits:
Key stakeholders within the youth voice area include Street Games and the Youth Sport – please refer to useful youth voice toolkits when consulting with young people.
https://www.streetgames.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Youth-Voice-Toolkit-v2-print.pdf
https://www.youthsporttrust.org/media/j1xf0qap/yst-inclusion-2020-youth-voice-toolkitfinal.pdf
Living Sport Youth Community
An opportunity for young people to shape youth sport and physical activity in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.
