Improving wellbeing outcomes for children and young people through research
The Sheffield Hallam University Children and Young People Physical Activity and Sport research group (CYPAS) held their inaugural knowledge exchange event at the AWRC on Wednesday. Maxine Gregory of the School of Sport and Physical Activity and one of the organising team, has written about the day and some of the key takeaways.
The first CYPAS knowledge exchange was superb event with an incredibly diverse range of speakers – all of whom were incredibly inspiring.
Sarah Williams talked about meaningful PE and the importance of enabling children and young people to influence planning and policy. We need to ‘help young people to find their own joy’ and flourish by stepping away from what we’ve always done (memories of cross country in the rain or forcing everybody to play rounders!)
Liane, Orla and Emma head up the iKids project. They shared interim findings and some shocking statistics on device usage in children at very young ages and the effects on child development, which got us all thinking. The impact of device usage by parents was a key factor. They highlighted the need for objective measures of screen time and more volunteers to take part from childcare settings and from parents of 3 years olds.
Kim Longbon presented insightful data on workload prioritisation for PE subject leads. She outlined the Q methodology and how to use this to identify what kind of PE leaders people want to be. Her insight will support the prioritisation of tasks in the future
Louisa and Tyler highlighted the research gap in understanding sport and exercise in alternative provisions (APs). They discussed the impacts and potential on youth development considering the 5Cs: connection, confidence, character, competence and caring.
Finally, Lloyd represented Sheffield Youth Neighbourhood Communities (SY-NC). He shared insight on how youth work needs to develop and how we should all work with communities. He highlighted that we need to ensure that the voices of young people feed into senior level decisions. His recommendations included a call for universities to validate community research and find ways to share info back with communities.
There were common threads across presentations which included:
- The call for agency and empowerment: we need to give YP a stronger voice
- The need to do things differently – let YP ‘find their own joy’
- Tailoring research and youth work to need and reality (not 9-5, April to April, school programmes starting part way through the year),
- Emphasising that research is learning not judging, for example when focusing on screen time usage, AP settings,
- Calling for programmes and investment that have longer term planning horizons
- Making information and insight more accessible to enhance its impact
Thank you to everyone who attended the event, and especially to our fantastic speakers. We all finished the day buzzing with ideas, and looking forward to building on these and strengthening the CYPAS network over the months ahead.