Overview
What does a County Sports Partnerships (CSP) aim to achieve? When I was approached to join a recently established County Sports Partnerships three years ago, I asked myself this question. Given that there are at least 40 of them and that they have existed since the year 2000, the answer was not as obvious as I had hoped.
Generally speaking, they were founded as hosted organizations—that is, as partially independent entities housed within universities, local authorities, or county councils—and were mainly supported by Sport England (SE). Some CSPs operate throughout aggregated unitary authorities, whereas others map onto one or more geographic counties or metropolitan areas.
With the main goal of increasing sport participation, its mandate is to establish collaborations among sports organizations, assist local NGBs, and plan local sporting events. The primary objectives of the membership organization, the County Sports Partnerships Network, are to increase the number of adults who regularly participate in sports by 500,000 by 2020. to get one million young people more active and to cut the number of inactive adults by two hundred fifty thousand. SE provides them with financial support and collaborates with them to deliver centrally designed programs locally.
Context
Several CSPs can be benchmarked to find wildly disparate routes from a same starting point. These currently make up around one-third of the original CSPs. Some have left their initial hosting arrangement to become separate incorporated organizations, typically as a company limited by guarantee (CLG) registered as a charity. For others, this also serves as a path of journey. Some have created half-way agreements, keeping the benefits of being hosted and having a business or philanthropic arm, while others have effectively integrated themselves as departments of the original host local body, such as inside a county council.
Changing role
By interacting with the physical activity and health agenda as well as social change initiatives, where sport for development has been utilized as an engagement tool with those underprivileged components of communities, CSPs have effectively adjusted to shifting requirements and expanded their offerings and revenue streams.
Some ‘drains-up’ examinations of funding sources and activities have been prompted by the financial limitations on local authorities as well as the desire for efficiency and ongoing development. It is probably accurate to state that this has been less of a strategic evaluation of purpose and, eventually, ambition and more of a tactical examination of operations. When paired with a long-term shift away from hosting arrangements and toward independence and incorporated status, the latter is essential to creating a sustainable organization.
CSPs may be crucial in providing the solutions given the government’s need to address the major financial and health effects of obesity, dementia, diabetes, and other chronic diseases for which physical exercise and sport are acknowledged preventatives and cures. On the surface, it would appear that they are in the best position to address this demand due to their local knowledge and expertise in the planning, commissioning, and implementation of sport and physical activity programs.
This is occurring, or is occurring very slowly, and not to the extent that funding agencies consider it to be a fundamental goal of a CSP. It would seem that there are three causes for this. First, there is a belief that CSPs are solely focused on “sport” and athletics. Second, the medical profession’s inherent conservatism and reluctance to use non-conventional remedies, and last but not least, the government’s lack of desire to unite the agencies—Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), public health, and sport and physical activity—that have the potential to significantly and immediately improve community health.
Sport England has been particularly supportive of CSPs, where local efforts promote community health and encourage participation in sports. However, when CSPs are funded in this manner, their ability to address the nation’s chronic disease burden is severely hampered. They are in a prime position to accomplish much more, and it is hard to imagine another organization with the technological know-how, experience, and local understanding better suited to do so.
Core purpose for the future
CSPs can improve these health outcomes with support if their primary goal is to increase physical activity and sport participation while also reducing the rising prevalence of obesity, dementia, diabetes, and other chronic diseases. This will require a shift in perspective among the agencies involved.
It is unreasonable to expect Sport England, local governments, and nonprofit organizations to give CSPs the funding they require to promote physical activity initiatives that will significantly impact the aforementioned health concerns. Funding for strategic health improvement is needed for this.
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Next actions
With the aim of providing a coordinated approach to public health challenges across counties, public health has seen significant developments in recent years. The CCGs now have the authority to decide what health support is needed, and CSPs have made a concerted effort to collaborate with CCGs and public health organizations locally in order to deliver the health programs that both public health and CCGs need. At best, this has produced a variety of results. There are organizational, financial, mindset, and cultural challenges that must be addressed if CSPs, Public Health, and CCGs are to collaborate more successfully to address the health issues mentioned. It is also important to comprehend how each can help achieve the intended results. The funding government agencies must be the ones to insist on closer collaboration.
The lack of a specific strategic goal and role to provide physical activity cures for community health improvements is the situational weakness for CSPs in all three organizations. Ironically, they have the knowledge, abilities, connections, and capacity to do so more than most.
Public Health England’s newly released ‘Everybody Active, Everyday’ document ought to serve as the impetus for getting the various agencies together and figuring out how each may help achieve the desired health improvement. If this is to occur, then all government agencies must acknowledge the goal of CSPs, which is to promote physical activity and sport for health-related reasons.
