Community Sport Newsletter - May 2018

CredAble Access

All City leisure centres are CredAble Access accredited, for providing fully accessible facilities for customers with a disability. Each leisure centre has an online virtual tour and full list of access features on their individual webpage. The videos provide a visual customer journey, to help choose the right facility, plan a visit and know what to expect prior to arriving.

Carer Goes Free Scheme

All leisure centres welcome a carer or essential companion to attend with and support a customer with a disability or health condition, to help them participate in any sport or physical activity. A carer/essential companion needs to a responsible adult aged 18 years or over, they can be a family member, friend, carer or support worker.

Flexible Fitness NEW 20% Discount Disability Offer

To support the growth in disability participation and supporting customers with a disability to get more active. The NEW 20% discount membership has been launched in January 2018.

This NEW offer is the same as the two existing Flexible Fitness products with the same terms and conditions but with the new discounted price.

Health and Fitness MA – Price - £23.99 - Offering 20% discount

Swim and Health Suite MA –Price £14.99 - Offering 25 % discount

All Nottingham City residents with a disability/health condition that meet the Active Nottingham disability criteria are encouraged to benefit from this new concession. Eligibility is determined by Blue Badge, Mobility City Card, In receipt of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) or in receipt of disability living allowance.

Pay and play concessions – Proof of entitlement

If customers with a disability don’t wish to sign up for a membership and prefer to opt for ‘Pay & Play’ activities at leisure centres., they can access savings of up to 50% discount. We ask that customers provide proof of address and entitlement due to your age, disability or receipts of benefits. We accept the following forms of proof:

Blue Badge Holder

Mobility Citycard holder

In receipt of Personal Independence Payment (PIP)

In receipt of Disability Living Allowance

New ‘Swim For Health’

An open public swimming session for everyone, available at ALL swimming pools, with the added benefit of a pool helper to support swimmers with health conditions, a disability or wanting to improve water confidence. There are 8 sessions a week across the 7 pools, offering a menu of choice for customers on different days & times.

Benefits - Quieter sessions, support from pool helpers available, meet and greet on arrival, accessible changing facilities, assistance with getting in and out of the water if required. Tips & advice available to help enjoy & appreciate the benefits of the water.

Inclusive Approaches to Community Delivery Workshop

Funded through Get Out Get Active (GOGA), the session aimed to provide partners with the tools, resources and confidence to enable more inclusive and disability activity in the community.

 The event began with guest speaker Tim Reddish CBE, International Paralympic Committee Board member, talking about his experiences and achievements along with the various hurdles he faced along the way. Following this, the day was split into three workshops, the first around inclusive marketing and engagement delivered by Helen Derby from EFDS. The second, looking at confidence in recognising triggers, behaviours and responses from Ella Lawrence-Cowling from Crocus Fields. And finally a practical session on adaptation and overcoming barriers, delivered by Martyn Jones from ActiveAce.

The feedback from the event was very positive and saw an significant shift in confidence from those of those attending from pre to post event. This event was only the start with ongoing support to be provided through further training, resources as well as the peer to peer network.

InstructAbility Nottingham

InstructAbility Provides disabled people with free, accessible fitness industry and level 1 Swimming training and qualifications followed by a voluntary industry work placement where instructors work to encourage more disabled people in the local community to participate in fitness activities. There are 8 InstructAbility placements in Nottingham that are now qualified and completing their voluntary work placement at one of the Nottingham City leisure centres.

You can read more about Tony Bicker, one of the InstructAbility Nottingham candidates, and his story in the Iris magazine here.

Tandem Buddies - VI Cycle Training

As part of Nottingham’s aspiration to be the fastest growing City for disability sport, Nottingham City Council are currently developing the opportunities for more visually impaired (VI) individuals to access cycling provision. Funded through the Get Out Get Active Programme (GOGA) and in partnership with British Blind Sport (BBS) and Ridewise, the project aims to provide more opportunities to access tandem cycles as well as upskilling ride leaders to confidently pilot tandems with a VI rider. 

Following an initial focus group with individuals from a variety of organisations, both with, and working with visually impaired individuals, a bespoke training course was delivered. The purpose was to provide the skills, knowledge and confidence for ride leaders to pilot and lead rides for participants with visual impairments, combining both disability awareness training as well as practical considerations to piloting tandem cycles.

Tandem bikes and qualified leaders will be made available at the GOGA Cycle for All sessions, taking place each month at Harvey Hadden and Clifton Playing Fields. As well as these sessions, further VI provision will be made available from the new Community Cycle Centres delivered through Ridewise. In addition to those trained we will also be looking to identify volunteers interested in becoming tandem pilots and will look to run additional training in the future, further developing the capacity and accessibility for VI cycling in Nottingham.

Get Out Get Active

Year Two is well underway for the Get Out Get Active Nottingham project! GOGA Nottingham has engaged a number of different community partners and organisations and supported inactive people to get active in fun, inclusive activity. A key element of the GOGA Nottingham project has been to work with key local partners and deliverers to ensure that current and future community delivery is inclusive and provides the opportunity for disabled and non-disabled people to enjoy being active together. To support this aim we have supported deliverers and community partners to attend a variety of training workshops including Inclusive Approaches to Community Delivery, Disability Confidence Training and Mental Health Awareness.

The GOGA Nottingham programme continues to expand and currently we have numerous sessions taking place including Ladies Only Walking Netball, Learn 2 Cycle, Couch 2 5k, Swim for Health, Cycling for All, Yoga, Archery, Badminton and Multi-Sports. For full details of session dates and times please visit our online calendar by clicking here or on our Facebook page.

If you or your organisation are interested in working with the GOGA Nottingham project, or think that it could benefit the individuals you work with, please get in touch by emailing goga@nottinghamcity.gov.uk.