Agenda item

Andy Maddox, Business Development Officer, and Jodie Bridger, LDP Programme Manager for the Get Doncaster Moving Programme provided a presentation to the Board.

The Strategy had first been introduced in 2016, with emphasis placed on developing a healthier population, and the intention was to seek support from the Health and Well Being Board moving forward in an endeavour to move this further forward, and create a culture change to encourage a healthy way of living for all and improve the health and well-being of the population.

It was reported that the impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic had been detrimental to the levels of physical activity taken as a whole, with 7% less movement carried out overall. This was massive, as inactivity could lead to an increase in health and mobility problems and was at a huge cost to the economy, with more stress placed on health services as a result.

The main principle that the Get Moving Strategy aimed to communicate, was the health benefits it would give to people in all areas of society, of any age, any background. Sport of any description brought huge benefits to a person’s life, and to their well-being.

Focus needed to be placed on targeting communities and those individuals most in need of support, and the strategy was looking at families with young children, people living in the most deprived areas, and people facing mobility issues. Many things made people inactive and it was a challenge to promote change and encourage new ways of living.

However, it was acknowledged that whilst the ideas were in place, without the systems to support the strategy, no change would take place. The aim of the strategy, officers informed the Board was now to work with the Health and Well Being Board to unlock behaviours and influence those to bring about change.

Members discussed the ideas presented to them and it was acknowledged that it was important that all partners across Team Doncaster worked together to unlock behaviours and influence discussions.

Members welcomed the update from Officers, and all members of the Board were in agreement with regard to the benefits of sport and activity and a number of ideas were put forward in terms of how the Board could support this moving forward:-

·         Support for Community Groups to enable them to operate in church or community halls providing dance or exercise;

·         Make use of any funding streams to support such groups as detailed above;

·         Talk to the Parish Councils and local communities to see what facilities they wanted or felt would be useful;

·         Help local sports clubs and groups ensure their facilities were coved secure to enable them to operate successfully when restrictions were lifted;

·         All areas needed to work together in order that everyone was reading from the same page, and it was proposed that the strategy was taken to Directors for their consideration;

Members thanks officers for their presentation, and a lot of useful information had been provided which enabled a strong foundation on which they could build. The Chair thanked Officers for their time, and requested that a further update be provided in six months’ time to see what progress had been made and what more could be done.

            RESOLVED that the update be noted.