As part of our focus on partnerships, we caught up with Mark Seymour, manager of our specialist partners The Gap Wales. The charity runs a project called The Sanctuary which welcomes and supports refugees and asylum seekers who arrive in Newport.
The Sanctuary’s varied work includes Levelling the Playing Field sports sessions which engage newly-arrived young people in football, badminton, table tennis and volleyball. Their drop-in football sessions are run in partnership with another of our Newport partners, Positive Futures.
The sport sessions have a simple goal: to get participants sweaty and smiling. The youngsters who take part are trying to find their feet in a new country – many don’t speak English, have little or no money, feel disconnected, have poor mental health and are susceptible to being exploited. A weekly sport session can give them a sense of belonging, community and safety.
The sports sessions run with Positive Futures are one example of partnership work across the city of Newport between like-minded community organisations, which also includes fellow Levelling the Playing Field partners Community Youth Project and NYCA as well as police, criminal justice and statutory services, to ensure every young person is offered the support they need.
“Across Newport there is a lot of collaborative work,” explains Mark. “We have ongoing relationships with other organisations which mean we have regular conversations about how we can help individuals in our communities.
One of The Gap Wales's football sessions for refugees and asylum seekers in Newport
“Newport is a city of 150,000 people so there is a sense of all knowing each other but also very much a spirit of collaboration, not competition. The partnerships work because they’re informal and relational.
“There are other great projects dotted across the city who I admire and respect hugely; our paths cross and we may share individuals who use both of our services. It’s based on relationships, mutual respect and focusing on the greater good.”
Newport has in recent years adopted a more person-centred approach, with organisations linking up to support young people who are at risk of involvement (or already involved) with the justice system.
He says: “Traditionally, when a young person was in trouble with the police, a third-sector or community organisation supporting that young person wouldn’t be involved in meetings or be seen as part of the support or the solution. But the pandemic has helped a lot of the larger statutory organisations see the influence that local, relational community organisations have.
“With any young person, we can pick up the phone to one of our partners in the community and have a chat about how we can collaborate to support them.
“It’s not based around service level agreements; it’s not formal. It’s about being relational in our community work rather than process-driven. We’ve not signed a contract with each other, it’s purely relationship-driven.”
Mark’s comments tie in with the Alliance of Sport’s new report on effective practice in partnership working in sport and criminal justice.
The report proposes that “communicative partnerships, which emphasise processes over outcomes through co-evolution and co-design, may present a more effective approach to partnership working,” especially those that “focus on social action and transformative change for beneficiaries,”
The ground-breaking report, produced by Dr Haydn Morgan and Dr Colin Baker, included case studies with organisations and key figures in Newport, including Mark, Positive Futures, Gwent Police, Martine Smith from Maindee Primary School and Matt Elliott from Newport Youth Justice Service.
Mark (pictured above) cites an example in which Newport’s communicative network led directly to ‘transformative change’ for a beneficiary. Community Youth Project, another organisation in the city, had a young asylum seeker attending their sessions. They contacted Mark who was able to assist in the young person getting an interview to support his asylum application, as well as joining in with their sports sessions with other asylum seekers.
“Partnerships should form out of a pre-existing relationship between the partners,” states Mark. “Too many partnerships begin with a project in which partners compete to be part of it. That runs the risk of involving the wrong people. It becomes transactional, so if one partner isn’t getting what they want from it, it soon falls apart. The focus isn’t on the greater good because there’s no goodwill built up beforehand.”
Mark recommends a book called New Power by Henry Timms and Jeremy Heimans which explores this shift away from cumbersome ‘big’ initiatives towards more agile, local, community-based social action.
He also gives an example from his own experience of how ‘big’ partnerships don’t always have the desired effect on participants.
A funded programme to provide football sessions for newly-arrived young people required The Sanctuary to recorded each participant’s name, date of birth, address, ethnic background and other data. With participants of complex backgrounds, the registration process for each session ended up taking longer than the sporting activity itself.
“It was the tail wagging the dog,” reflects Mark. “It was a barrier that wasn’t necessary. Given their history, the participants were understandably nervous of giving out personal details. With my knowledge of them, I could have done a head count and given an approximation of their ages, country of origin etc.
“It was a very white, middle-class approach to running that project, and it was transactional. It unwittingly excluded people from taking part in sport and diluted its positive impact. However, the funders were very positive in response to this feedback and have learned from the experience.”
Read Alliance of Sport’s report, A Model for Partnership Working in Sport and Criminal Justice, here.