Football in the community schemes: exploring the effectiveness of an intervention in promoting healthful behaviour change

Abstract

This study aims to examine the effectiveness of a Premier League Football Club's Football in the Community (FitC) schemes intervention in promoting positive healthful behaviour change in children. Specifically, exploring the effectiveness of this intervention from the perspectives of the participants involved (i.e., the researcher, teachers, children and coaches). A range of data collection techniques were utilised to including the principles of ethnography (i.e., immersion, engagement and observations). Alongside conducting focus groups with the children. The results allude to merely 'keeping active children active' via (mostly) fun, football sessions. Results highlight the important contribution the 'coach' plays in the effectiveness of the intervention. Results relating to working practice (i.e., coaching practice and coach recruitment) are discussed and highlighted as areas to be addressed.FitC schemes appear to require a process of positive organisational change to increase their effectiveness in strategically attending to the health agenda.

Understanding Football as a Vehicle for Enhancing Social Inclusion: Using an Intervention Mapping Framework

“…Evaluating the impact of the Albion 2 Engage was necessary to establish intervention effect, and fundamental for sustaining resources for continued de-livery (Parnell & Burrows, 2014). A compounding problem was the lack of expertise within BACT to develop and apply monitoring and evaluation, something that is echoed within the literature (Parnell et al, 2013).…”

“…Football has evolved from its early days of delivering school based coaching programmes to attract new supporters (Parnell et al, 2013;Watson, 2000). Indeed, clubs and their respective community progammes are delivering on key agendas such as social inclusion .…”

“…Moreover, the methodological difficulty of identifying sport's precise contribution and the challenge of establishing cause and effect in behavioural change may also contribute to a lack of evidence (Coalter, 2007). However, research in this area, particularly in football is beginning to emerge Curran et al, 2014;Parnell et al, 2013;Pringle et al, 2014). Yet there remains a need to provide support for football-based practitioners, who often lack the required skill-set, develop effective and workable evaluation strategies for their interventions Walker, Heere, & Kim, 2013).…”

“…Using football to tackle the health agenda has begun to gather evidence Parnell et al, 2013;Pringle et al, 2013). Current understanding about football shows that this intervention option can offer some valuable health improvement programme success (Bangsbo et al, 2014).…”

“…Owing to this apparent mass media youth appeal (Smith & Westerbeek, 2007), it has received support as a vehicle to deliver on the social inclusion agenda. Within England, Football in the Community (FitC) programmes, which are often organised as independent registered charities attached to professional football clubs, lead the social welfare and corporate social responsibility agenda for football (Anagnostopoulos & Shilbury, 2013;Parnell et al, 2013;Walters, 2009;Walters & Chadwick, 2009). Watson (2000) originally suggested that FitC schemes are identified as organisations that can aid the development of a range of social outcomes including sport participation rates, drug and alcohol abuse, social exclusion and health (which has been echoed more recently by Parnell and Richardson, 2014).…”