Insights from Term 1
As the cost of living rises, young people are amongst the most vulnerable groups affected by it. As prices climb higher, more and more households are likely to give up on extra-curricular activities. With budgets being slashed for mental health support and youth services, young people across the country face unprecedented challenges in navigating a complex and deeply unequal world, with shrinking opportunities – around a quarter of young people in the United Kingdom will need to take on additional jobs to support themselves, high interest rate student loans are making further education more inaccessible, and skyrocketing rent means that young people are under more stress to make more money just to survive.
Our Delivery
Dallaglio RugbyWorks aims to provide some of the most vulnerable young people in the country with the opportunities to transform their lives and live up to their maximum potential.
This term, we worked with 649 young people across 49 pupil exclusion units, alternate provisions, special educational needs schools, community centres, local sports clubs, and secure estates across 7 regions in England and Wales.
For more details about the different programmes we offer, please check Our Work.
This term included a series of trialling and testing new and innovative ways to monitor, evaluate and learn from our programme delivery. We are moving to fewer surveys and shifting our focus towards highlighting our young people’s voices and generating qualitative data about our sessions, and how our young people receive them. For more details on how we’re doing this, and what our findings have been this term, please read the full report here.
This term we also started conducting our brand-new digital skills sessions. Jose, a former participant of the RugbyWorks programme, turned coach turned Delivery Activator delivers these sessions in London and the East of England. Despite the popular perception of young people as digitally savvy, Jose discovered that most young people have a very weak understanding of how they can mobilise their skills in using the internet and other technology to build on their careers and upskill themselves. To this end, Jose guided and supported young people with sessions on staying safe online, and creating a professional e-mail.
While we haven’t been able to conduct many holiday camps in this term, 7 young people in Leicester got a chance to watch the Leicester City Women play against the Chelsea Women at King Power Stadium.
This term also saw our new programme offerings RugbyWorks Girls, and RugbyWorks Evenings both expand to over 100 young people each. Our RugbyWorks Girls programme was established in line with our Term-Time programme, but with an increased focus on motivating young girls to engage in sports and physical activity more.
RubgyWorks Evening is also similar to our Term-Time programme, with an added objective of providing safe and productive alternatives to young people that are at high risk of engaging in crime or criminal behaviours, especially in the hours between 3 pm and 7 pm during term-time.
Lastly, we also started delivering sessions in the East of England, at Stevenage Education Support Centre and Barclay Academy in Stevenage, and Oakhill STC in Milton Keynes, the nation’s only Secure Training Centre. In the coming weeks, we will be delivering sessions in several more schools around Hertfordshire and Luton.
Our Partners
None of our work this term would have been possible without the valuable support of our partners. In London, we continue to work with athletes from the Dame Kelly Holmes Trust, who draw on their experiences and skills to inspire young people to take up sports professionally.
We have expanded our delivery in secure estates to Oakhill STC, with support from Levelling the Playing Field.
We are also providing Sports Leaders Qualifications to 184 young people this year and have taken on another apprentice from Coach Core, Cameron, who has experience with school exclusion himself and is eager to help our work with other young people.
Lastly, in the North West, we have built our partnership with On Side Youth Zone and are delivering sessions in The Hive at Wirral and Warrington Youth Zone.
For more details, download our 2022-2023 Term 1 Impact and Insights report here.