Engaging with BAME Disabled Communities

Shaheen Bi

Director of Projects, Sporting Equals
 

Obstacles for BAME disabled communities in sport

The purpose of this session was to discuss how we might champion ethnic diversity in the sport and physical sector.
 
Shaheen explained the difficulties in getting disadvantaged communities to participate in physical activity and how there were obstacles for BAME talent to get into grassroots sport. Those from BAME backgrounds are far more likely to be physically inactive.
 
There are further hurdles for disabled people from BAME communities who are shown to be considerably less active.

Get out Get Active (GOGA) programme


Shaheen drew attention to the Get Out Get Active (GOGA) programme. GOGA is an exciting new three year programme being delivered in a bid to encourage less active people of all ages and abilities to come together and increase their participation in sport and physical activity.

When engaging with BAME disabled communities there must be discussions on how to integrate all disabled and non-disabled individuals into physical activity to be able to enjoy being active together.

Phase one of GOGA looked at and covered opportunities between 2016 – 2019. Phase two will cover 2020 – 2023.

Phase one of the programme ran within 18 localities across the UK, but Shaheen focused on Manchester, Bradford, Nottingham and London in this session. Below are some key findings from Bradford.

Bradford

Key statistics
  • 60 participants.
  • 33 representatives from community groups, sport providers and public agencies.
  • 20 disabled people primarily from the Pakistani Muslim community.
  • Five white British disabled people.
  • Two parents.

What we found
  • Lack of awareness.
  • Need suitable provision, cost, physical, transport and confidence.
  • Language barriers.
  • Cultural awareness.
  • Cultural tradition.
  • Religious beliefs.
  • Stigma.
  • Family attitudes.

Conclusion

The room then broke out into groups and gave feedback on what they thought were barriers in their centres.

Main feedback was the buildings and funding – what we can do differently.
  • Swimming pools are now all surrounded by glass and people can see everyone in the pool This is a major problem for getting BAME women swimming. Local councils need to go to the community when looking at designing new leisure centres and ask what is needed.
  • Sector needs – look at changing the way we deliver sports, not just in leisure centres, by having teams go to festivals.
  • Sites have lack of funding so this is a barrier. How do we move forward and work together with local authority?
Some final points were that we need to foster an understanding of the local community, particularly different cultures, faiths, ages and genders.

To finish, it was said that when working with national governing bodies (NGBs) we should develop more robust target approaches and engage with all people from BAME communities.