Levelling the Playing Field has sparked a unique unification of services in Newport which offers life-changing support for children through sport and physical activity.
Levelling the Playing Field started out as a project for our specialist partner in the area, Positive Futures, to engage ethnically diverse children and prevent and divert them from becoming involved in the Criminal Justice System. It has since become a catalyst for collaboration between a host of like-minded local agencies to come together and support ethnically diverse communities.
Positive Futures, local primary schools, key community figures and organisations, Newport Youth Justice, police, other statutory services, Sport Wales and even professional boxers have all joined forces to form a strong and trusted support network for local children to protect and divert them from the many nefarious and exploitative influences on the streets.
The network has set up a packed timetable of sport sessions for children in the city’s ethnically diverse communities of Maindee and Pillgwenlly. These sessions include football, rugby, skateboarding and boxing which has proved massively popular, especially as local Commonwealth Games gold medallist Sean McGoldrick often pops by to inspire the youngsters.
The philosophy of the Newport partnership can be summed up as ‘connection before correction’; in other words, you need to connect and build a trusted relationship with each child before you can even think about correcting their behaviours.
It’s sport and physical activity that allows those connections to build. Sport – delivered in safe places and by safe faces – provides the platform where trusting relationships develop. Only when that trust is earned can session staff begin to understand what problems children are facing and use the network to help.
“Levelling the Playing Field provided the common ground for people to come together around this topic of supporting children, because there needs to be significant change,” says Lucy Donovan, Development Manager at Positive Futures.
One notable innovation has been a member of staff from the Youth Justice Service, Matt Elliott, being embedded within the Positive Futures team to build and maintain connections at a preventative stage before the child can become immersed in offending and exploitation.
Matt has become a friendly and familiar face to the children (and not just because he is a dead ringer for Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp!). Matt’s presence adds consistency to the lives and daily routines of every child. They know and trust him and he can speak to parents/carers, offer guidance and help deal with issues when they occur.
This is a stark contrast to the fluctuating support of the past, where short-term funding and the decimation of youth services saw sport provision come and go – meaning trusted relationships either never started or began to develop and were then abruptly and damagingly severed.
A recent meeting of stakeholders in the partnership was attended by Eleri Thomas - Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner for Gwent, Amanda Lewis - Head of Gwent’s Probation Delivery Unit, Caroline Ryan Phillips - Head of Prevention and Inclusion for Newport City Council, James Mapstone – CEO of the Alliance of Sport, Karl Reed - Head of Community Sport and Wellbeing at Newport Live, Martine Smith - Equity Lead at Maindee Primary School, Matt Elliot - Youth Justice worker and Chris Porter - Youth Worker Newport City Council.
Guests of honour, though, were some Roma children from Maindee and Kofi, a young person from Pillgwenlly, who performed a rap explaining the many potential pitfalls of living in the local area. Attendees were also shown a moving video about the profound impact the timetable of community sport and physical activity is having on local children.
The meeting discussed how to spread the positive effects of the partnership’s work further across the city, conducting a city-wide analysis of need and strategic plan (especially around ethnically diverse communities), capturing what is working and where lessons can be learned and amplifying the voices of young people at decision-making level.
"The Newport model is part of research into partnerships within the sport and criminal justice sphere currently being conducted by Dr Haydn Morgan from the University of Bath, Dr Colin Baker from the University of Gloucestershire and Justin Coleman from the Alliance of Sport."
Justin, COO of the Alliance of Sport (who manage Levelling the Playing Field in partnership with the Youth Justice Board) explained: “The Newport multi-agency partnership works so closely together it feels like a prosocial family.
“They use a communicative partnership approach so when a corrective or critical care situation arises, they are proactively positioned to communicate, solve and support from multiple perspectives. The young person feels – and is – supported by an entire caring community. They are connected, before 'connection before correction' is even needed.
“Research indicates this differs from a strategic partnership approach, as this tends to form because of a problem, rather than be formed before the problem emerges.”