Select Committee on Health Written Evidence


Memorandum by Sport England (WP 34)

INTRODUCTION TO SPORT ENGLAND

  Sport England is responsible for providing the strategic lead for sport in England to deliver the Government's sporting objectives. Our vision is for England to be the most active and most successful sporting nation in the world. Our mission is to work with others to create opportunities for people to get involved in sport, to stay in sport, and to excel and succeed in sport at every level.

  We develop the framework for the country's sporting infrastructure and distribute Lottery funding to where it will deliver the most value for sport. There are nine Regional Sports Boards, focused on supporting delivery, with a remit to prepare Regional Plans for Sport, develop partnerships, and secure and target investment to make the greatest impact in local communities.

OVERVIEW OF THE PUBLIC HEALTH WHITE PAPER

  Sport England welcomes the Government's recognition of the unique contribution that sport and active recreation can make to deliver public health targets. The Chief Medical Officers report in 2004 outlined the conclusive evidence supporting the vital contribution that physical activity can make in both the prevention and treatment of a range of diseases. We can no longer ignore that those who are active have up to a 50% reduced risk of developing many of the chronic diseases. In his report, the CMO drew parallels with the smoking epidemic over the past 50 years and in his "Call for Action" asked government to set in place "key strategies" to bring about similar changes in physical inactivity. Many of the commitments set out in Choosing Health are a positive step towards addressing this and will help to make England a more active and healthier nation. However, without proper resourcing and continued investment beyond the White Paper there will be little change.

  Sport England looks forward to working with the Department of Health and other partners to effectively deliver the physical activity commitments but to also continue to develop and extend this important and previously overlooked area of work.

  Sport England submission will focus on the physical activity and sport related announcements set out within the Public Health White paper.

  Will the proposals enable the Government to deliver achieve its public health goals? Are the proposals appropriate, will be effective and whether they represent value for money?

MARKETING HEALTH

  Sport England welcomes the recognition of the need to better market health through a series of campaigns. It is suggested that a physical activity related campaign either developed as part of the obesity campaign or a stand-alone campaign is prioritised as an early focus within the marketing health strategy. An imaginative, consistent, sustained and well-funded multi agency physical activity marketing campaign is needed drawing on the lessons from past physical activity campaigns.

  Sport England has been working with partners to better market sport and physical activity. During the summer of 2004, we ran a pilot campaign in the North East of England called, "Everyday Sport—every body feels better for it." Campaign messages and activities focused on promoting sport and physical activity as a fun, healthy pastime, with the intention of capturing the popular imagination and providing a persuasive and achievable call-to-action. We welcomed the Department of Health's involvement and support, which included part funding the campaign's evaluation.

  The evaluation has shown the campaign to be a success in terms of raising awareness of the benefits of an active lifestyle and has identified Sport England as an important player in developing and delivering physical activity related campaigns. The learning from the evaluation will help to inform any future cross government national campaign which we are keen to be involved with.

Recommendations for action:

    —  Government to fund a physical activity campaign as a priority within the marketing health strategy.

    —  Government to invest in developing a PR physical activity message, similar to the Five a Day message that is easily understood by the general public.

    —  Physical activity campaign to build on the lessons from the Everyday sport campaign run by Sport England.

    —  Provide links to Active Places through Health Direct, enabling people to access information about the opportunities.

CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE

  We welcome the priority given to children and young people within the paper, in particular the Healthy Schools Standard and the recognition of the importance of physical activity within this initiative. Government has done much to address the sporting needs of secondary and primary school children through the PESSCL programme. However, more needs to be done to ensure that a wide range of physical activity and sporting opportunities are provided that are relevant to young people today and reflect their choices and needs.

  Recognition of the obesity epidemic through the establishment of a cross government Obesity PSA has been a very important step. However, the evidence base of what interventions, both nutrition and activity based, have an impact for the under 11s is extremely sparse. Further investment needs to be made to test out and evaluate creative approaches to inform effective delivery. It is important not to delay action because of a lack of evidence especially given the tight deadline of 2010. However, nutrition and activity colleagues are beginning to work together for the first time and we welcome the opportunity to work with new partners to find innovative solutions.

  Greater attention needs to be given to preschool and primary school children particularly through supporting parents to better understand the link between active play and a healthy lifestyle. A stronger focus needs to be placed on developing young children's physical literacy skills from a very early age. Sport England is working with the Youth Sport Trust and other partners to take forward physical literacy work and we have commissioned Liverpool John Moores University to undertake a research and mapping exercise of current physical activity initiatives for the under 11 age group to develop future physical literacy work.

Recommendations for action:

    —  Re: obesity PSA—commission action research in the following areas: early year's provision, the role of play, new approaches to delivering physical education and school and community sport.

    —  Explore ways of supporting parents to build activity into their childrens lives through for example the development of a resource/hand book.

    —  Support and resource the proposals coming out of the children's physical literacy research and mapping exercise.

LOCAL COMMUNITIES LEADING FOR HEALTH

  Sport England supports the recognition of the vital role that Local Authorities play in promoting health within their communities and the need for Local Authorities and Primary Care Trusts to work more closely together especially through local strategic partnerships and local area agreements. More however needs to be done to forge closer partnerships between health and sport/leisure through shared budgets and developing appropriate structures at the local level possibly through physical activity and health partnerships.

  The White paper acknowledges that people face many barriers to leading active lives such as poor quality environments and access to sporting facilities. The paper however sets out few proposals for addressing these problems, which will exacerbate health inequalities for many communities.

  Sport England welcomes the creation of the Physical Activity Promotion Fund (PAPF) to support the roll out of targeted evidence based community physical activity interventions. The fund will build on the emerging learning from the Local Exercise Action Pilot programme which is jointly funded with Sport England and the Countryside Agency. It is clear that a creative route for the delivery of the fund is required and that an outcome-focused approach is adopted which responds to local needs and priorities.

  Primary Care Trusts are not best placed to bring together partners and lever in additional resources to make a real difference on the ground. Building on our commitment and role within the LEAP programme, Sport England would welcome the opportunity to play a key roll in the management and delivery of the fund through our existing Regional Sports Boards. The membership of the RSBs reflect a broad range of stakeholders including the Regional Directors of Public Health, local authority, the voluntary and private sector players, who understand regional and local needs for the effective delivery of community based work. The Boards have a track record of levering additional regional and local funding and we would welcome the opportunity to discuss how together we might boost the current allocation with potential matched regional funding.

  The RSBs membership, role, capacity, expertise and track record in investing in sport and physical activity interventions provides an excellent delivery model for government to consider adopting for the roll out of the Physical Activity Promotion Fund.

  The development of the free swimming and PCT and sport clubs guidance is welcomed although more resources need to be earmarked to help implement the learning more widely.

Recommendations for action:

    —  Building on the Local Strategic Partnership model to develop structures to address physical activity through the creation of and strengthening of physical activity and health partnerships.

    —  Sport England to play a key role within the management and delivery of the Physical Activity Promotion Fund.

    —  More specific proposals to be developed to create safer and more activity friendly environments.

    —  Sport and physical activity to be a core element of the community health initiatives outline in the paper.

HEALTH AS A WAY OF LIFE AND A HEALTH PROMOTING NHS

  Sport England welcomes the proposals to support individuals in making the right decisions for their own health through the creation of NHS health trainers. Physical activity advise and support needs to be a core element of the role. Sport England would welcome involvement in the development of core competencies framework for developing the necessary skills for health trainers. It is important for health trainers to link with existing services being provided by the sport, leisure and exercise sector who are promoting healthy lifestyles through physical activity.

Recommendations for action:

    —  SkillsActive and Skills for Health to work together to develop the skills and knowledge required by professionals promoting physical activity.

WORK AND HEALTH

  The workplace offers a significant potential setting to promote healthy lifestyles as over half of the UK population are currently in employment and it is estimated that individuals may spend up to 60% of their waking hours in their place of work. Sport England supports the commitments outlined to promote the work environment as a setting for better health. We are seeking to be an exemplar employer in terms of supporting staff to be more active through for example the introduction of a healthy lifestyle benefit, workplace challenges, free pedometers being given to all staff and flexible working. We support the call for the NHS to take the lead as examples of healthy employers.

  We welcome the opportunity to work with other government departments to provide advise on encouraging activity within the workplace. The intention is to test out this service in two or three key departments this year, potentially starting and leading with the Department of Health The resource implications of providing a free consultancy service needs further consideration and we call on DH to provide some financial support towards the delivery of this service.

  We are working with the British Heart Foundation, Department of Health and Business in the Community to create the evidence base on promoting health and well being through the workplace. An applied research programme called "Workplace Health" is being developed. Nine regional pilots will be established during 2005 to test the effectiveness of health promoting interventions in the workplace relating to physical activity and other lifestyle behaviours such as diet and smoking.

  We support the development of healthy business assessments to be incorporated into the IIP standard to highlight to employers and employees the benefits of investing health and well being of staff. We encourage the Department to learn from the experience of the Yorkshire region who are looking to test out the development of a new work life balanced module to be incorporated into IIP.

Recommendations for action:

    —  Department of Health to lead by example as a healthy employer by taking advantage of Sport England's consultancy service.

    —  DH to support the testing out of a new physical activity/work life balance module to be included into the IIP standard across the Yorkshire region.

DO THE NECESSARY PUBLIC HEALTH INFRASTRUCTURE AND MECHANISMS EXIST TO ENSURE THAT PROPOSALS WILL BE IMPLEMENTED AND GOALS ACHIEVED?

  Sport England believes that key to the realisation of many of the commitments in the White paper is to radically review the way that public health is planned and delivered and to consider how best to capitalise on sport's contribution to improving public health. It is crucial that an outcome-focused approach is adopted, allowing local determination of priorities, which reflect regional and local needs, capacity and resources.

  A key requirement for the delivery of the national framework is the need for the Department of Health to demonstrate commitment and leadership, working more effectively across government with a strong focus on prevention. DH needs to clarify the role of the Activity Coordination Team (ACT) and take the lead in coordinating the departments who share responsibility for physical activity. We recommend that the core membership of ACT should be rationalised to key delivery departments and agencies, with other bodies brought in at appropriate times for specific areas of work.

  It is vital that regional delivery is supported and the commitment to create a regional physical activity post in each region is welcomed. We would recommend from our own experience in establishing a strong and vibrant regional structure that the approach adopted is not overly prescriptive.

  Much greater coordination and support for physical activity initiatives is required at the local level. PCTs should be given sufficient capacity to enable them to effectively adopt a lead role in driving the local physical activity agenda, potentially linked to Local Strategic Partnerships, as they need to work in conjunction with delivery agents such as local authorities, sport and leisure providers, social services, transport, environment and education etc. The introduction of Local Area Agreements offers significant opportunities for PCTs councils and other partners to address improvements in the health of their communities.

  Developing a local infrastructure that engages all relevant partners and works in a joined-up way to support the delivery of physical activity is likely to lead to the establishment of local physical activity and health partnerships. There is a strong case for linking these partnerships to Local Strategic Partnerships and strengthening the role of LSPs. LSPs should be seeking pooled budgets and joint commissioning for public health issues such as physical activity. Delivery could then be co-ordinated through LSPs having structures that address individual areas such as physical activity.

  More needs to be done to incentivise joined up working at a local level by including physical activity in appropriate performance assessment mechanisms. Sport England has been working closely with the Audit Commission to build physical activity targets into the Local Public Service Agreements and Comprehensive Performance Assessments for local government. We also hope to co-operate with the Department of Health and the Healthcare Commission to develop physical activity criteria on which PCTs could be performance managed.

Recommendations for action:

    —  Reduce the membership of ACT to the key delivery departments and agencies.

    —  LSPs to develop structures to address physical activity possibly through physical activity and health partnerships.

    —  Additional resources to be deployed to ensure that physical activity levels can be measured at a PCT and local authority level to enable impact assessment.

    —  Develop physical activity criteria against which PCTs can be performance managed.

January 2005





 
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