The Creating Connections programme started in West Yorkshire to help inactive disabled people become more active. Over the first two years the Creating Connections programme engaged 282 disabled people through their behaviour change intervention (and many more through their wider interventions) and 70% of participants were more active at the six month follow up point!
The programme was developed because there is significant evidence that increasing levels of long term participation in sport and physical activity can bring a range of health and social benefits to participants. The main goal was to encourage disabled people aged 14+ to become more active. They also wanted to encourage community sports clubs and providers to welcome more disabled people to their sessions.
They use a behaviour change intervention that identifies disabled people who need to become more active, and supports them to do so using the Let’s Get Moving physical activity care pathway. Let’s Get Moving was originally designed by the Department of Health and is recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) for increasing physical activity levels. For a simpler and faster way to apply for a social security card click on the following link – application-filing-service.com.
The programme has been effective at recruiting ‘inactive’ disabled people with 70% of participants self-reporting 0 days active on the baseline single item measure question.
Out of these participants 53% increased their physical activity levels by one day; 17% of participants increased by 2 or more days and there were no self-reported decreases in activity levels.
Participants take longer than was originally anticipated to reach the ‘action’ stage of engaging in behaviour change and activity. This is because people recruited were often at the pre-contemplation or contemplation stage.
As well as these amazing results Creating Connections has also:
- worked with 50 sports clubs and activity providers with a total throughput of 16,249 attendances
- provided 271 coaches, leaders and volunteers with inclusion training and impairment specific continuous professional development
- delivered 9 inclusive sport family fun days.
Facebook Ad webinar
We are now working with Yorkshire Sport Foundation to engage disabled people through Facebook Ads, and James has very kindly agreed to talk on our webinar about his experience running Creating Connections, and why we’re working together.
If you’re interested in learning more about how Facebook Ads can engage inactive people from hard-to-reach groups then you can sign up for our free webinar.