What is the Active Blaby Network?
The Active Blaby Network is a collection of people, partners and organisations, from private, public and voluntary sectors as well as members of the public, all aiming to increase the physical activity levels of residents of Blaby District.
Physical activity is a complex behaviour to change which incorporates many aspects, some of which are;
- Previous experiences of physical activity (such as PE at school)
- Health conditions and disabilities
- Local opportunities that are suitable and affordable
- Social support and enabling environment
- Amount of understanding of the benefits of physical activity and what it is
There are many parties that can have an influence, positive and negative on someone’s physical activity levels. These can be from the people you live and work with up to national organisations. What Blaby District residents need is for all of these parties to be working in the same direction to make physical activity the easy choice and ultimately making an active lifestyle the norm. The network will constantly review the system around physical activity and work towards implementing the rolling 3 year plan that will focus on outcomes that will have the greatest impact on the residents of Blaby District.
Blaby District Council host the Active Blaby core team, who utilise funding to deliver more specialist programmes within the district but also act as the physical activity hub where we link in with other local providers to support residents to be more active. These providers may not be solely activity providers but community organisations or health services that can enable a person the time, support or resource to be more active.
As mentioned above, there are many parties involved in creating an active environment in Blaby District and the Active Blaby core team want to work these parties to improve the activity levels of residents. Although not all partners will be captured in these categories below, here are some that we will be focusing on in the first stages of this network;
Referral Partners
The Active Blaby core team act as the physical activity specialist hub for Blaby District. They already have good links with health services such as GPs and physios that access the Exercise Referral Scheme but there are many more partners who refer for different reasons. Existing partners include the Children & Family Wellbeing Service from Leicestershire County Council and the School Sport & Physical Activity Networks. We will look to expand this referral network by engaging and identifying common goals with partners who work with groups who are known to be less active, such as people with disabilities and people from lower socio-economic backgrounds. If you believe you could be a referral partner, please find more information on our Referral Page.
Physical Activity Instructors
Within Blaby District, there is a wide variety of activities and specialisms within the community delivered by a range of self-employed physical activity instructors. You can see when visiting the DIRECTORY on this website that there are hundreds and hundreds of opportunities in the community to be active, from Falls Prevention programmes to Zumba and Clubbercise to Yoga and Pilates. The network will continually identify gaps in provision, how to engage with a wider audience and support our community providers to be as inclusive and effect as possible to get inactive people more active. If you are a physical activity provider and would like some more information on how to get involved and get support from Active Blaby, please got to the Physical Activity Provider page.
Sports Clubs
Like physical activity providers, sports clubs provide an essential service to help people become more active. Many people see sport as being the top level that we see on TV but one key role of Active Blaby is to reframe sport as a fun activity to do with friends/family whilst being active. Our Active Blaby DIRECTORY has hundreds of sports opportunities for residents to access. A priority is to support clubs to as accessible and inclusive as possible for new members so that they can start their activity journey and feel supported and welcome which will help them maintain the activity. For more information on our support for sports clubs, please visit our Sports Club page.
Community Partners
A key part of the network are the people who are working deep in our communities, working with the people who we are looking to promote activity to. These range from more formal groups such as the Women’s Institute, University of the Third Age or Weight Management groups to less formal groups such as lunch clubs and knit and natter groups. By working with people in their existing groups, there is additional social support and activity can be added with minimal changes to routines or behaviours. These groups know their people better than us so we need their insights to help us engage with them.
If you would like to contact us for further information about the Active Blaby Network, please contact us on 0116 2727703 or email on the form below.
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