‘It’s all about developing the whole child’: An examination of the ‘legacy’ benefits of Youth Sport Trust’s school-based inclusion initiatives

Abstract

Between 2011 and 2013, the Department for Education (DfE) in England made £3.3 million available to support the development of opportunities for young disabled people to access highquality physical education and school sport. The DfE with the Youth Sport Trust (YST) developed a range of initiatives to help meet this aim, including Project Ability, TOPsportsability and the Young Leaders programme. The authors of this article were commissioned by the YST to evaluate the school-based inclusion initiatives. One aspect of the evaluation was an examination of project ‘legacy’ benefits – a term much cited in the run-up to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games. This article asks what additional, unexpected, positive legacy benefits appear to be associated with the capacity built by the DfE Disability project initiatives. A wide range of legacy benefits beyond those the YST set out to achieve were found, including tangible achievements such as accreditation, and intangible benefits such as the holistic development of participants beyond sports.