Students from Tyne Metropolitan
College (TyneMet) have taken part in breakthrough research which could point
the way to improved wellbeing among some of the North East’s most disadvantaged
young people.
They joined researchers from Brunel
University London and the charity StreetGames in a study that found
training community sports coaches in mental health awareness could have
significant benefits.
It revealed that positive
mental health was enhanced among those who participated in doorstep sports
programmes - informal sports clubs aimed at 14 to 25-year-olds living in areas
of high deprivation.
This was especially the case when
support staff, including sports coaches, sports development officers, leisure
service managers, community leaders, education specialists, young peer mentors
and StreetGames advisors, had received mental health awareness training.
For the study programme, the mental
wellbeing of 184 people taking part in doorstep sports projects in Salford, in
Manchester, Brentwood, in Essex, Leeds, Birmingham, The Wirral, Warrington and
Newcastle, was tracked between February 2017 and May 2018.
The tracked projects, which
offered sports including football, golf, boxing and pilates, were led by StreetGames’
teams who had recently taken part in its pilot Safe, Fit & Well mental
health awareness training programme.
Researchers found the number of
young people reporting a level of ‘high wellbeing’, as measured by the Warwick-Edinburgh
Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS), increased in all
cases after coaches had taken the training.
TyneMet reported a jump of 63%
in the number of their members reporting a level of high wellbeing – from 11%
of the participants at the beginning of the study, to 74% at the end.
The number of participants with
a level of ‘low wellbeing’ dropped, with TyneMet reporting that by the end of
the study, all the members taking part had either medium or high levels of
wellbeing.
The bespoke staff training included
Mental Health First Aid training, a four-day Young Health Champions residential
in the Lake District, a webinar on how to evidence wellbeing, and on-hand or
on-call support from a specialist StreetGames Doorstep Sport Advisor.
The training allowed front line
staff to better identify mental health or wellbeing concerns among the young
people and, if necessary, provide support.
It is hoped the research, titled
Safe, Fit and
Well: Case Study Research, by Prof Louise
Mansfield and Dr Alistair John PhD, of
Brunel’s Welfare, Health and Wellbeing research theme, will help provide a
deeper understanding of the role community sports have in supporting good
mental health.
Craig Robson, Sports
Development Manager at TyneMet, said: “The Safe, Fit & Well project offered
us the opportunity to work with students within our college who struggled with
confidence, self-esteem, weight worries, anxiety, anger issues and other
aspects linked to poor mental wellbeing.
“It was great to be able to
work with these students and provide experiences that enabled them to improve
their physical wellbeing through one-to-one gym sessions. To see their
confidence and motivation levels increase, was rewarding for us as staff.
“Tyne Metropolitan College will
be looking to run this project again this academic year so that more students
at risk of poor wellbeing can be offered this valuable support system.”
Dr Alistair John said: “We
found that doorstep sport, particularly when tailored to the needs of young
people with mental health issues, had a positive impact on self-reported mental
health.
“Many of the doorstep sport
projects also had peer-to-peer support embedded, which we discovered was
particularly beneficial for improving self-esteem, confidence, a sense of
belonging and de-stigmatizing mental health.”
Manchester-based StreetGames was founded in
2005 to make sport more widely available for disadvantaged young people and to
maximise the power of sport to change young lives and to change disadvantaged
communities.
Paul Jarvis-Beesley, Head of
Sport & Health at StreetGames, said: “We already know that levels of poor
mental health are exacerbated by poverty.
“We are starting to understand
the effect of adverse childhood experiences on the emotional and behavioural
difficulties of young people in disadvantaged areas.
“We also recognise that low
wellbeing and depressive conditions are barriers to participation, so if we can
find a way to support young people with their mental health and wellbeing, we
would also be helping them to participate more.”