Everton in the Community – the Impact Report for Disability Programmes 2017
During the #Morethanfootball Action Weeks, Everton in the Community raises awareness for people with a disability. Next to showcasing their disability programmes, the club made available their Impact Report for Disability Programmes 2017.
Everton manages the largest and most respected disability football programme in the world, the Club’s official charity delivers a number of multi-sport programmes across Merseyside with a view to helping every individual who is under the guidance of Everton in the Community achieve their full potential.
The disability programme provides football and physical activity opportunities for thousands of disabled children and adults each year. The programme is all-inclusive and there are teams available to those with any disability whether that be learning, physical, reduced stature, autism, cerebral palsy, deaf or partially-sighted.
The programme supports disabled people into education, training, employment, volunteering and social opportunities, whilst tackling negative stigma in society and challenging the huge inequalities that still exist.
Impact Report 2017
In 2017 the disability project staff delivered several equality and diversity initiatives to engage with over 2500 disabled people by providing various sports and social interaction opportunities.
One of our targets was to provide opportunities for disabled females, by bringing together partners Hope University, special schools.
EITC and the youth service we have developed a female disability football team that trains every week and plays competitive games matches, during the year we regularly engaged with 102 disabled females.
Sport England have highlighted that disabled children do not have the same sports opportunities as their non-disabled peers, so in the special schools we have provided multisport and physical activity opportunities for disabled children across Merseyside engaging with 158 disabled children.
We have also engaged with mainstream schools to deliver Paralympic awareness sessions to 627 school children which included Paralympic sports blind football, sitting volleyball and boccia.
EITC staff have also linked in with schools and the youth service to deliver sports sessions after school in community settings we have engaged with 104 disabled children.
Through the Active Me project we have delivered multi-sport and social interaction opportunities for disabled adults across Merseyside mainly from the day care services engaging 125 disabled adults.
We have a number of disability teams that represent the club these are on a pan disability or an impairment specific basis, so we have a deaf team, a down syndrome team and a amputee football team.
The disability teams train every week and play in local, regional and national competitions, in 2017 three of the Everton amputee players represented England in the European football Championship in Turkey getting to the final and playing in front of over 40,000 fans.
We have over 100 disabled players that represent the club and we have given regular competitive football opportunities for 296 disabled people.
At Alder Hey hospital we deliver fun activity workshops to sick and disabled children every day Monday to Friday to ease the pain of hospital life we have engaged with 1026 children.
Part of our project is to empower disabled people into everyday mainstream society we support this by providing work placement, volunteer and employment opportunities 20 disabled people have taken up these opportunities.
The main funding for the project is via the Premier League (£100,00 per year) and BBC Children in Need (£32,000 per year).
In September one of the Everton disability teams were invited Special Olympics South Korea to travel to South Korea to raise awareness of disabled people and disability sport, the teams played a friendly match at the Incheon premier league ground after a premier league game and also were guests at the British Embassy.
In November disability manager Steve Johnson travelled to Uganda to develop football opportunities for disabled people this was in partnership with a Danish disability sports organisation, Steve delivered a number of disability coaching workshops for the coaches from each of the regions.
Case studies can be found Impact Report Disability, Everton in the Community 2017.
