Podcast transcript

Sport Development

Dr Emma Sherry

Audio

You can also listen to the interview [MP3 17.4MB].

iTunes

Visit this channel at La Trobe on iTunesU.

Transcript

Russell Hoye: Welcome to Sport Unpacked, a regular podcast that explores issues in sport and the views of researchers at La Trobe University. I'm Professor Russell Hoye, Director of La Trobe Sport, your host, and my guest today is Dr Emma Sherry, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Management and a member of the Centre for Sport and Social Impact here at La Trobe. Our topic today is sport development and we’re going to explore questions such as how and why sport is being used for development, what is the evidence that it works, why should governments use sport for their development outcomes, and what are some of the challenges about doing research on this topic. Welcome Emma.
Emma Sherry: Thanks Russ.
Russell Hoye: We see sport being used to promote a range of health messages, endorse commercial products, and increasingly, as a focus for community development. What is it about sport that people turn to so often, to deliver such benefits?
Emma Sherry: Sport, particularly in the Australian community, but we’re not alone here, on a global scale, is really ubiquitous. We see it everywhere. It’s on the front pages of our newspapers, it’s on twenty of the back pages of our newspapers, it’s on the television, radio and the social media and online environment is getting bigger and bigger. So sport really is everywhere and even if you don’t really like sport, or follow sport, it’s still going to be something that you’re going to see. That being said, it is culturally and socially really important to a lot of people, from children, where we send our kids off to swimming lessons, for safety as well as for fitness, Little Athletics and Auskick, those sorts of things, right through to the Olympic Games, nations use sport as a way of flag waving or showing their strengths, so it really is an incredibly powerful cultural tool that we can hook into to encourage people to make lifestyle changes or commercially to buy products.
Russell Hoye: Can you give us some examples in sport where it’s being used by sort of, health agencies, or community focussed organisations, to do something positive in the community.
Emma Sherry: We’ve seen a really big shift, it started to happen in the ‘90s, particularly in the UK, and Australia tended to follow that example, where sport was seen as a really effective tool to hook people into programs that could work towards health outcomes. Those health outcomes aren’t just the physical health that we would normally associate with sport. It could also be community health, mental health and that sort of expression of community togetherness. So a really nice example that most people wouldn’t think of is when Victoria suffered the Black Saturday bushfires, some of the first organisations that went up to those communities in the refuges, were sporting clubs, and so the children were given cricket bats and balls, or footies, for example, and they got to see their athletes, and it just helped bring the community together in a space of fun. There are also more serious programs where they really are clear, targeted outcomes, of we are targeting this specific population, to get these specific outcomes. So it might be the indigenous population has often used sport to encourage children to stay in school, so no school, no play, those sorts of things, but there’s also obviously, very clear health outcomes for physical activity in particular, but sport specifically.
Russell Hoye: There seems to be some confusion out there in the literature in the research world that there’s this phrase ‘sport development’ and there’s the phrase ‘sport for development’. Can you articulate what the differences might be.
Emma Sherry: Sure. Sport development is a very broad term, and it is quite contested, like everything in most areas of academic study, but realistically, when we think of sport development, we think of two streams. There’s development of sport and that’s what most people would understand what sport does. We take little Johnny, aged 6, in Auskick and then he works his way up through the ranks, to play for the AFL. That would be the best example of development of sport. Development through sport, or sport through development, there’s a whole lot of different ways we can talk about it. That’s where we use sport as a bit of a fly paper, to attract people to a program that has got other intentions, or other outcomes. So as I said, it might be health outcomes, and that would be the most prominent examples. There are sport for peace programs, over in Israel in particular, East Timor had sport for peace, there’s sport for community development, mental illness, prison programs, a variety of different things. So the idea, really, of sport for development is that sport is the hook or it’s the fly paper. It doesn’t actually necessarily make the change happen, but it’s the reason that the people come together.
Russell Hoye: So that really suggests that sport organisations such as in football or cricket or netball, really need to partner with some other specific organisation to deliver the sport plus sort of program, so if the sporting organisations are great at doing the sport delivery, what sort of agency sort of look to partner with sport to deliver those additional outcomes?
Emma Sherry: We’ve seen lots of different agencies working in this space, so there’s lots of the non-government organisations and charitable organisations that sort of started filling those gaps. Sport has actually lagged behind, as in organised sport has lagged behind a bit there. They’re now starting to pick it up in their internal programming. But lots of health foundations, say for example, here in Victoria VicHealth funds a significant number of sports to deliver health outcomes. Various departments of the government, federally and state, fund programs, and then you will also see organisations such as AusAID which will fund international partnerships, so things such as community development and health outcomes in the Pacific islands, for example, are some examples there that are used.
Russell Hoye: Is there really strong evidence that these sort of programs actually work, in your experience?
Emma Sherry: The question of evidence is getting stronger. Professor Coulter is one of the seminal authors in this area and his best phrase is that some programs work for some people some of the time. So we do have evidence that programs work, but we’re not declaring at this stage that it’s a magic pill that can fix all sorts of situations. So I think I would preface it by saying, yes, there is evidence that programs are effective, but they need to be designed appropriately and have the right outcomes in mind. So dropping a basket of soccer balls into Israel isn’t going to fix the Middle East crisis, but smaller programs working with certain populations on border towns for example, may help develop relationships for that community, if you can see the difference there.
Russell Hoye: Given the sort of variable evidence, or the patchy evidence across different types of programs, governments seem quite strongly in seeking to use sport for those outcomes all the time. Do you think they’re seeking to use sport like as a good news department, or do they actually, working from a solid evidence base, knowing that they’re going to get a good bang for their buck, in other words?
Emma Sherry: I think they’re starting to realise that they need a solid evidence base and they’re starting to ask for a solid evidence base from those organisations that are being funded. I think what sport has, which is a bit of a double-edged sword, is that people often know in their gut, and they’ll actually say that, that sport does something, but we really haven’t unpacked what that something is. So, we’re working on that premise, that it is a lot about the feel good, it is a lot about, I’ve seen person X do this program, and now they’re at university, or now they’re skinnier, or now they’re healthier. You know, they’re off drugs. So we have lots of anecdotal case studies of individuals that have helped, but we really haven’t unpacked what the mechanisms and the policies are that make that happen. So I think that’s our role as a research institution, to help the governments set those evaluations in place so that we do have a strong evidence base, going forward.
Russell Hoye: Okay, you’ve been doing some work with the Big Issue Street Soccer Program. Could you firstly explain what that program actually is?
Emma Sherry: Sure. The Big Issue is a street magazine. You will have seen it in most capital cities in Australia and also in some regional cities, and it’s the people who sell the magazine on a fortnightly basis, and it’s $5 and $2.50 of every one of that goes into that person’s pocket. So the people who are Big Issue vendors tend to be experiencing homelessness, mental illness, intellectual disability and unable to work. So what this does is supplement their pension, largely, and gives them also some social connection and a sense of independence. A number of years ago, I think it must have been 2005, one of the psychologists working with the Big Issue in Melbourne, happened to also be a soccer coach, and he started a once a week run-around at Edinburgh Gardens in the Fitzroy flats with some of the local vendors. That’s grown in this period of time, from then until now, to up to thirty sites around Australia, I think it’s dropped back now, but it was up to thirty, servicing a variety of different communities that have been identified federally as at-risk communities, helping those communities through a weekly soccer program which runs every week, even Christmas Day, and ties them into services, brings them into the community, peer support for a variety of different mechanisms, so that’s where that started. Also we hosted in 2008 the Homeless World Cup which feeds in our stock of ... our program feeds into this international event, which is known as the Homeless World Cup.
Russell Hoye: So they’re sort of quite two diverse settings for what is, could be termed a sport development program. How do you go about evaluating whether it’s doing good in the community, and actually being able to come up with some tangible statements about what it does?
Emma Sherry: It’s incredibly difficult and I think I’ve had the benefit of this Big Issue project in particular. I thought I was doing it as a one-off post PhD and it’s ... I’ve just kept doing it ever since. I’ve had seven years now with the program, that we’ve been able to refine what we’re looking for and identify what we can’t find. What we’re doing is really working with the participants most of the time to try and unpack how often they come, what brought them to the program, why they come to the program as opposed to just turning up to a legal advice, or to a mental health worker, or their case worker, to find employment. There’s something else happening with the soccer program that they’re getting, that they’re not getting from the regular services. And I think our three key findings that we’ve continued to find throughout the seven years, is it gives them a sense of community. A lot of people suffering, who are marginalised or at risk, are socially isolated, and the social isolation actually compounds either their illness, or their at-risk status. So the first key, and this would be across the majority of sport development programs, is that that bringing of people together. It gets them out of their house, or where they’re staying.; The other key finding I think that we think is most important, is it gives them an opportunity to work with other people to effect change and it gets them to hook into other services, so for example, the program here in Melbourne quite often has the police come and play some friendly matches with them. When the program first started the matches weren’t quite so friendly, but they’ve both figured out now how to make that work, but it makes the people seem, they’re not them and us any more. It can bring people together. And the third thing which is actually quite self evident but we didn’t unpack it for a few years, is it gives people structure and a sense of purpose. And we’ve often known – I mean governments will often say that if people are employed, it’s better for people to be employed rather than to be on welfare, so it’s the same sort of process that these people have a reason to get up that morning, they have, they can turn up each week at a regular time, and those skills actually help them go for job interviews in the future. If you know you have to be there on Wednesday at ten o’clock, you kind of used to being somewhere at Wednesday at ten o’clock. So it actually teaches them some structure and gives them some direction in their life.
Russell Hoye: And clearly the Big Issue’s focus for that Street Soccer Program would be to have people involved in that program for a certain period of time and then develop those skills and move on. Is that what you found?
Emma Sherry: There’s a bit of in and out, actually. The majority of people do follow that path. They come in when they’re at crisis and then they tend to get what they need out of the program and then they’ll leave. We’ve found, I guess you could call them, alumni, continue on with the program in a mentoring or a coaching role, which is quite useful, and then there’s other people, and I know of some of them because I’ve kept bumping into them over the years, is that they will come back when they have ups and downs. So when they’re doing well, you won’t see them, and then when they feel like they need some direction or some support, then they’ll come back in. So it’s really, they don’t graduate, it’s there for people when they, when and if they need it, but the majority of people, we are aiming to move them through, that we want them to be in a place in their life that they don’t need to come.
Russell Hoye: Clearly that seems to work for the Big Issue organisation which, their sort of mission is focused on that particular type of person, who’s got those social disadvantages confronting them. Do you think other sport organisations who are out there in the community running general sort of sport participation programs are well equipped to do the same types of developmental things?
Emma Sherry: I think that they’re really learning that they’re not, but they’re figuring out what they need to bring in. So it’s really about bringing the skill base in, so I think it’s really telling that the program that the Big Issue has established, was established by a qualified psychologist who was operating in that welfare space. The soccer skills were secondary. He’s a very good soccer player, an excellent soccer coach, but that wasn’t the reason why he was in the organisation. So I think as mainstream sport clubs and mainstream sport organisations are moving into this space, they’re realising that they need to focus on having people who are skilled either in multi-cultural awareness or disabilities, specifically, if they’re targeting that community, mental health in particular, depending on what the program is and how it’s structured, you need people with expertise in that area to support those participants, because it’s not the same as someone who’s middle class, educated, relatively healthy across the variety of scales, coming to just play sport. They’re coming for another reason.
Russell Hoye: Do you think sport organisations in this increasingly very competitive commercial environment, are seeking various funding streams to just support their mainstream activities, so when you’ve got health agencies and Departments of Health, offering money for those types of activities, do you think sport organisations are seeking to get access to those funds for the right reasons, or simply as a way of increasing their revenue streams?
Emma Sherry: We’ve seen a bit of both, to be honest Russ, and I think that when the first lot of this sort of funding was coming out through organisations such as VicHealth for example, that there was a big leap on this new pool of cash. I think as the field in Australia has sort of developed, that people have realised that it’s not worth the cash. I don’t mean that in a negative way, but it’s exceptionally complex and difficult product, if you want to think of it in that way, to deliver to the community, it’s going to use all the funding, and probably more. If you’re targeting difficult communities in particular, you’re going to have to employ new staff, you’re going to have to develop new programs. It does have costs. I think at the start we did see some fund-chasing. I haven’t noticed it as much over the last few years because people have started to realise that one, they have to provide the evidence that they’re actually doing it, and that it’s working, and two, that difficult it can be to work in this space.
Russell Hoye: It must be quite challenging to undertake the detailed research evaluation work in this particular context. Can you explain what have been some of the challenges you have faced, and how you’ve overcome them?
Emma Sherry: I think the biggest challenge, and where industry and us as researchers are getting better at this, but actually defining what we were looking for. So I think when we first wandered in, us as researchers, and industry as industry, were like, we know it does something, so you’re kind of wandering around in the murky depths of something. We’re now getting much better at saying to the organisations, what is it that you want us to measure? So, if we’re claiming, if you’re claiming mental health outcomes, then we need to look at a base level mental health and then improvements, and we need to kind of measure how the programs facilitated that, as opposed to just going, sport’s doing something good and making people better. So I think the key challenge is what is it we are measuring? And secondly to that, for the academics or researchers listening, is how do we measure it? The what is the first part, the how is probably the bit that we’re unpacking the most at the moment in this field as academics. The other challenge really, which I think is something that we’re only just starting to realise, particularly in the sport space, is that personal toll on the researcher. These communities are often extremely at-risk and quite difficult to work with, and it’s mainly qualitative, so it’s mainly talking research and I think we’ve underestimated the personal toll on our researchers, particularly our research assistants doing the data collection of listening to the stories. So when you’re talking to people who are in prison, or who have drug problems or severely long-term unemployed, they tell you stories that you might not necessarily want to hear and that kind of stays with you. So I think we’re also needing to be more aware as researchers of how we protect the researcher and not just the participant in the ethics process. So there’s some really big challenges there, but it’s getting clearer as more and more of us are doing this work.
Russell Hoye: It must be quite satisfying working in this space, knowing that you’re having some long-term impact on, not only the sport industry, but the communities they’re working with. Can you sort of summarise what you think your impacts are going to have in the future about how sport sort of works in the sport for development space?
Emma Sherry: Sure. Yeah, you definitely don’t do this work for the money or the glamour. I think that’s probably the biggest benefit for me, is from ... I’ve come from a field of social justice, so I feel like I'm contributing to a space that is useful to the community and I think the biggest legacy that we hope to leave in this work is that we will be able to identify what an intervention program using sport needs to make the outcomes effective, and if we can identify that, and the organisations doing the sport programs can make that happen, then we should see the outcomes that we all think is happening even more clearly so we should see healthier and happier communities.
Russell Hoye: Thank you Emma. Well, that’s it for today. My thanks to Dr Emma Sherry, senior lecturer in the Department of Management, and a member of the Centre for Sport and Social Impact here at La Trobe University. Thanks also to Matt Smith from the digital media team for production. You can also follow us on Twitter for Emma Sherry ...
Emma Sherry: @EmmaESherry
Russell Hoye: And me @russhoye. You can find a copy of this podcast on the La Trobe University website under the news tab and also at www.latrobe.edu.au/cssi.

News

Podcast transcript

Sport Development

Audio

iTunes

Transcript

Find an expert

Big FAT Ideas

RSS feeds

Connect

Study

Research

Library