How collaboration is helping break down barriers to the beautiful game

Ways to Wellness is excited to have joined forces with Northumberland Football Association (FA) to ensure more of the region’s young people can access England’s national sport.

Having started in September, ‘Your Move’ was a pilot programme of inclusive training sessions for teenagers with acute or long-term health conditions that make it difficult to take part in traditional footballing environments.

The outdoor sessions, which were run by Kylla Sjoman, a former Champions League footballer that has played for her home country of Canada, as well as with Sunderland AFC Women, are currently paused for the winter break, but when they re-start in the spring they will be open to those aged 13 to 17, having been made possible by the FA’s Journey to Inclusion Fund.

Taking place on the 3G pitch at St Peter’s Sports Hub in Wallsend, North Tyneside, Kylla, who is now Northumberland FA’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Officer, spends 50-minutes with youngsters, tailoring non-contact training to their individual needs to build fitness, skills, and confidence.

The idea came about after Fliss Hunter-Nott, a specialist social prescribing link worker on the Ways to Wellness SPACE Pilot (Social Prescribing And Community rEsources) programme at the Great North Children’s Hospital, which supports children and young people with chronic, complex conditions, noticed there was no existing football training provider that could meet the needs of one of the patients she works with.

Together with Helen Rowland, a physiotherapist at the hospital that serves on Northumberland FA’s Inclusion Advisory Board, she brought the idea to create something new to Kylla’s team, led by Head of Football Development David Jones, and ‘Your Move’ was developed.

David explained: “There is a lot of disability football support, and there are lots of mainstream training programmes, but Ways to Wellness helped us identify a support gap for young people with complex health conditions that neither of these options is quite right for.”

‘Your Move’ initially ran for six weeks before taking a winter break, as the outdoor facility at the hub is not suitable for the young people it is aimed at during the colder months.

Watch some of the initiative’s participants explain what the sessions have meant to them on Ways to Wellness‘ YouTube channel. Young people can register to take part in the next ‘Your Move’ sessions on a form on the Northumberland FA website at northumberlandfa.com, and to find out more about SPACE Pilot, and how it supports the young people in its care, and their families, visit waystowellness.org.uk/space-pilot.