Photography credit: Cameron Ross Hall and Holmlands Media

Talking Sense - The launch of the new CIMSPA-endorsed ‘Complex Disabilities in Sport’ workshop.

We caught up with Callan Barber, Active Lifestyles Workforce Manager at Sense, to learn about the charity’s new CPD offering focused on supporting people with complex disabilities in sport.

People with complex disabilities make up one of the least active portions of society, with 51% of people with three or more impairments being inactive. With specialist care needs often a key factor in ability to participate, it is crucial that our sector workforce is trained appropriately to help participants with disabilities to get the most out of sport and physical activity in a safe and accessible way.

With the launch of the Sense Active ‘Complex Disabilities in Sport’ workshop, the charity aim to ensure that there are more sport and physical activity professionals with the relevant training to plan and deliver opportunities for people with complex disabilities.

A recent highlight of Sense’s sports programme has been enabling Hazel (pictured), who is blind and living with complex disabilities, to go skiing. As well as being a great deal of fun on the slopes, the experience provided by a qualified instructor has given Hazel confidence and allowed her to connect with people.

Callan, Sense’s Active Lifestyles Workforce Manager, has been working with the charity for nine years. Callan began by coordinating local sporting activities and has developed her knowledge of working with disabled people over her career, now reaching a stage where she is able to share her experience with other professionals working in the sector through Sense’s CIMSPA-endorsed workshop.

Callan was keen from the start to partner with CIMSPA to showcase the benefits of the workshop to as many sector professionals as possible:

“Being a CIMSPA Education Partner demonstrates to people that might be thinking about coming on the workshop or looking for opportunities to improve their skills that what we’re offering is of a high standard and it’s been recognised as quality-assured and something that they will benefit from because the content has been matched against industry professional standards.”

Professional standards

With this initial goal set, it was then crucial for the workshop to align to the relevant professional standards – in this case, ‘Working Inclusively (Working with Disabled People)’ These, alongside the full range of sector professional standards, were created in collaboration with employers to fully reflect the real-life key requirements for working in a particular area of the sport and physical activity sector. CIMSPA ensures that endorsed training opportunities are mapped against these professional standards to maintain consistent quality across learning for sector professionals.

“I was conscious of making sure that the areas that we could add value to the sector and the areas that we have really good insight and specialism in were mapped to the professional standards. It was fairly easy to map those across and look at what was needed from a learning product covering those areas.”

The benefits

Ensuring that education is of a consistently high quality through the assessment and endorsement of providers and programmes is key to the ongoing professionalisation of our sector. However, it is also important to keep the end user in mind.

By creating a CIMSPA-endorsed workshop aligned with professional standards, Sense are creating confidence in coaches. The workshop will provide attendees with practical skills, allowing them to communicate confidently with people with complex disabilities and be able to engage with a wider audience effectively in their day-to-day work.

This benefits Sense, too, as it gives them confidence in choosing coaches. They know that by working with coaches who have completed their CPD workshop, the people involved in the sporting activities that they offer to disabled people have the necessary skills to provide a positive experience.

Callan also highlighted how becoming a CIMSPA Training Provider Partner has connected Sense with the rest of the sports and physical activity sector:

“It means that we can have better networking opportunities with other organisations. We can be involved in conversations with other training providers and they can let us know about other learning opportunities. It’s also a good opportunity to share our work a little bit wider with those sorts of partners as well.”

Education Partners

Alongside over 300 Employer Partners, Awarding Organisations and Further and Higher Education Institutions, Training Providers like Sense Active that are partnering with CIMSPA form a sector-wide network that recognises and provides quality training in line with professional standards.

Partners like Sense include a diverse range of providers who are able to share our reputation for quality along with many more benefits of belonging to our professional network.

They will also form part of the Training Academy for Sport and Physical Activity, powered by CIMSPA. This quality-assured suite of training provision will work on a local and national level to ensure that professionals working in sport and physical activity and those looking to start a career in the sector are able to access the skills required to develop their careers. Its core focus is addressing skills shortages by creating new training pathways to meet the current and future needs of our sector.

The soon-to-be-launched Academy forms one of the six system interventions of CIMSPA’s new strategy, ‘Releasing the Power of our Profession’. The strategy, as a whole, sets out a foundational environment that brings together multiple initiatives to make professional recognition a reality for the sports and physical activity workforce and sector.

Becoming a partner

Put your training on the map by partnering with the sector’s only chartered professional body. We represent the sport and physical activity sector’s leading education providers and engage with you in regular quality assurance visits as well as celebrate your achievements across our digital and print platforms.