Sport England: A new strategy for an active nation
To supplement the theoretically driven discussion on MHSU, there is a need to better
understand the political and national context within which PA programmes are delivered.
Doing so provides depth to the consideration of potential PA enablers or barriers towards
engagement. As such, this section explores the current government sport policy discusses the
potential implicates associated with relevant policy directives.
The government have stated they have a duty to ensure that all individuals can benefit
from the power of sport (Department for Culture Media and Sport, 2015). There are several
demographic groups whose engagement in sport and PA is well below the national average,
thus the benefit of engaging those groups that typically do little or no PA (e.g., women and
girls, disabled individuals, individuals with mental health problems, those in lower socio-
economic groups and the older population) is vast (Department for Culture Media and Sport,
2015). It is well established that individuals with mental health problems are more likely to
be less active due to the significant barriers they present towards being active, such as low
confidence, low self-esteem and body consciousness, which can lead to physical health
problems (Chapman, Fraser, Brown, & Burton, 2016). Therefore, more needs to be done to
increase participation and harness its power to change individuals’ lives for the better, with a
focus on those who are currently inactive.
Sport England is a non-departmental public body under the Department for Digital,
Culture, Media and Sport, responsible for the allocation of funding to the organisations,
national governing bodies, and NGOs that orchestrate sport development nationally. Sport
England’s overall vision is that everyone in England, regardless of age, background, or
ability, feels able to take part in sport or PA (Sport England, 2016). They launched their five-
year current strategy in May 2016 outlining how Sport England will work to make sure
everyone can experience the benefits of sport and PA.
The current Governmental sports policy, ‘Sporting Future: A New Strategy for an
Active Nation’, aligns with a body of work which recognises sport as a social development
tool, particularly in relation to enhancing mental health through PA engagement (Robson &
McKenna, 2013). The policy direction focuses on the need to work in different ways to
ensure all individuals benefit from taking part in sport and PA (Sport England, 2016). In
order to achieve this, key actions include: focusing more money and resources on tackling
inactivity, investing more in children and young people from the age of five, helping those
who are active to continue to be active, putting customers at the heart of what they do,
helping sport to keep up the pace, working nationally where it makes sense to do so, working
with a wider range of partners, and working within the sport and PA sector to encourage
innovation.
‘Towards an Active Nation’ is Sport England’s response to the government’s
‘Sporting Future’ strategy launched in December 2015, which helps to deliver against health,
social, and economic outcomes set out in the government’s strategy (Sport England, 2016).
The overall aim and desire of the ‘Towards an Active Nation’ strategy is wanting all
individuals to experience the benefits that taking part in sport and PA brings, which include
five specific outcome areas including: mental wellbeing, physical wellbeing, individual
development, economic development, and social and community development (Sport
England, 2016). The physical wellbeing area builds upon a body of work that suggests being
active can reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and other medical conditions such as
cancer, dementia, strokes, heart disease and depression (Lee et al., 2012). The mental
wellbeing area highlights the importance of PA in contributing to individuals’ mental
wellbeing through increased self-esteem and confidence, life satisfaction, cognitive
functioning and a positive impact to emotion regulation. Further, these focal points build
towards consideration of individual development, an area focused upon educational
behaviour/attainment, increased self-esteem, efficacy, confidence, and soft skills
development (i.e., integrity, responsibility and leadership) through PA engagement. The
penultimate focus area is economic development through sport in respect to job opportunities
and economic success through increased health and wellbeing across organisations. The final
strategic focal point falls upon social and community development, where the intention is to
build stronger more cohesive communities, built on social capital and trust, where PA acts as
a bridge between potential divides.
These five outcome areas drive Sport England’s strategy and the allocation of
community sport and PA funding, where their focus extends beyond merely increasing
participation numbers, to include the wider social, cultural and medical benefits of activity
(Sport England, 2016). Every investment focuses on at least one of the five outcomes in the
government’s Sporting Future strategy (Department for Culture Media and Sport, 2015). A
community programme which aimed to address these areas (mental wellbeing, physical
wellbeing, individual development, economic development, and social and community
development) and provide a response to the policy/strategy above was called ‘Get Set to Go’.
This programme will now be introduced in detail.
Mind, the mental health charity and ‘Get Set to Go’
Organisations, charities and mental health services in the UK such as The Centre for
Mental Health, Mental Health Foundation, and ‘Together’ are addressing national mental
health concerns through innovative research and effective interventions. One key
organisation that works to improve mental health services, raise awareness and promote
understanding of mental health is Mind, the UK based mental health charity. Mind’s vision is
to not give up until everyone experiencing a mental health problem gets both support and
respect. The charity has six key goals which they strive to achieve through their work
(staying well, empowering choice, improving services and support, enabling social
participation, removing inequality of opportunity, and organisational excellence) as well as 5
values that are at the core of all the work that they do (open, together, responsive,
independent and unstoppable).
With 2778 members of staff, 6587 volunteers and 1004 trustees, Mind provide advice
and support to over 390,000 individuals with mental health problems through programmes,
helplines, online information, booklets and high quality, tailored services such as talking
therapies, crisis care, counselling, housing, sport, and workplace training. Mind works in
partnership with a successful network of 140 local Minds across England and Wales who are
independent charities and therefore responsible for their own funding. Each local Mind
understands the needs of their community and tailor their services to suit. As well as
delivering these services, they are also involved in the planning of mental health services,
campaigning both locally and nationally, and help to change attitudes of mental health in
their area. Mind are also charity partners to the ‘Heads Together’ campaign and joint partners
with Rethink Mental Illness in the ‘Time to Change’ campaign to end stigma and
discrimination of mental health. They are involved with policy work influencing government
decisions such as the Mental Health Act Review, NHS long term plan which identifies
mental health services as a priority, as well as campaigning for local councils to include
funds for mental health programmes into public health budgets.
Mind also work with sports providers and sector influencers such as Sport England
and the Sport and Recreation Alliance. In 2014, Sport England and the Lottery Fund awarded
a total of £1.5 million to Mind to implement a community project designed to facilitate
mental health recovery through sport and PA. Mind embarked on a 3-year national
programme called ‘Get Set to Go’ (GStG) to encourage MHSU to become more involved in
mainstream sport and exercise within their communities. This project adopted a community
based participatory research (CBPR: Israel et al., 2005) approach to intentionally engage
community members (MHSU) in sharing their unique perspectives and knowledge
collaboratively with the researchers in all aspects of the research process (i.e., decision
making, capacity building, knowledge generation and dissemination of findings) (Riffin et
al., 2016). The main emphasis was placed on the MHSU and the influence of non-academic
researchers in the process of creating knowledge to then integrate the knowledge gained with
the action to improve the health and wellbeing of the MHSU through the programme.
The programme was delivered via three delivery arms; locally, digitally and through
national media campaigns, with the aim of increasing motivation, participation and
overcoming barriers to PA. This current body of work is embedded within Mind’s GStG
programme. Therefore, it is important to provide a greater contextual understanding for the
development of this thesis, to introduce the programme and to explain the different delivery
arms of GStG.
Local delivery. National Mind funded 8 local Minds across four regions in the UK
(North West, North East, London and the West Midlands). Sports Coordinators were
recruited in each area to organise the programme locally, recruit, train and support the peer
volunteers, as well as work closely with mainstream sports providers where the activities took
place. The local Minds provided group-based peer support and one-to-one advice for those
interested in sport and PA. A range of activities included sports such as badminton and
football, fitness activities such as the gym and boxfit, and mindful activities including yoga.
The aim was to reach and provide peer support to 1,600 people, with the delivery of the
programme aiming to reduce barriers towards PA participation and help Mind’s users join in
with mainstream sport and physical activities. This was successfully achieved, with GStG
supporting 3585 individuals to become active in their local communities (Mind, 2019).
Individuals with lived experience of mental health were recruited by Mind, as peer
volunteers, to help facilitate the sport and PA taster sessions. The peer volunteers provided
tailored advice, using their lived experience of mental health problems, to 1870 individuals
registering for ongoing support throughout the programme. Two hundred and twenty-four
peer volunteers were recruited, trained and supported by Sports Coordinators throughout the
programme. Mainstream sports providers were invited to attend a ‘Mental Health Awareness
in Sport and PA’ training workshop to better understand the programme participants. MHSU
entered the programme through self or professional/medical referral.
Digital delivery. Mind has an existing online peer support community platform called
‘Elefriends’ with over 16,500 members. The online peer community encourages its members
to share their mental health struggles, and provides a safe space, that is moderated by Mind,
to talk, provide and receive support. As an arm of the GStG programme, the website was
further developed to better support online users to share their stories about getting active.
Complimentary online ‘sport peer support’ content was created which involved Mind
uploading images, quotes and stories associated with sport and PA experiences, as well as
information aimed at increasing participant motivation and a “Being Active” hashtag to
encourage interaction between the members. The overall aim of the information was to
encourage, inspire and promote the benefits of PA and reduce the perceived barriers to PA for
the online community. Over the duration of the 3-year programme, GStG raised awareness of
how being physical active can support mental health to 83282 individuals who engaged with
a variety of means such as web and social media content. GStG also provided online peer
support to 8219 individuals (Mind, 2019).
National delivery. Nationally, the programme aimed to reach a wide range of MHSU
with motivational messages about the value of sport and PA for wellbeing and mental health
recovery. Throughout the programme, three nationwide communications campaigns were
launched (July 2015, April 2016, March 2017). Each of the three campaigns focused on a
specific target population. The first target population included adults with mental health
problems which engaged with 14399 adults and 2070 taking action as a result of the
campaign materials. The second target population was women with mental health problems,
engaging with 64135 women, 23587 taking further action with regards to their PA behaviour.
The final campaign targeted South Asian women and engaged with 4748 women.
Each national campaign lasted two weeks and involved key motivational messages
being distributed to individuals via films, advertising, information resources and social
media. Examples of website content included a webpage titled “Getting active helps me feel
more positive”, an online guide titled “PA, Sport and Mental Health” and an individual’s
personal account called “Dance gives me vitality”. Examples of illustrations, pictures and
captions from social media include a ‘Five steps’ online video which encouraged
individuals to take small steps towards improving their PA levels, and a ‘How to’ PA and
sport booklet which included specific actions to help towards PA engagement.
Researchers at Loughborough University were commissioned as the independent
academic evaluation team to investigate the effectiveness of all 3 delivery strands of GStG
and their overall impact on participant outcomes, such as PA behaviour, attitudes towards PA
including motivations and barriers. The evaluation team worked collaboratively with a Lived
Experience Panel to consult on aspects of the evaluation including the designing of materials,
language to be used for programme resources and how best to disseminate findings to the
mental health population. The effectiveness of the programme was evaluated against
comparative data collected from a control group of participants who were not
involved in GStG. To summarise, the aim of the research team was to evaluate the
effectiveness of GStG and the evaluation objectives were to understand a) the
relationship between sport and mental health recovery, b) the effectiveness of the peer
support model for encouraging sustained sports participation, c) the reach of the
national communications campaign and d) the impact of online peer support on
mental health and sports participation.
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