Hutt Valley No Exceptions District Declaration
No Exceptions in action: Change within sports and recreation organisations
The No Exceptions strategy and the Hutt Valley No Exceptions district are already combining to influence outcomes in the Hutt Valley region.
Alongside the No Exceptions strategy, there is a No Exceptions leadership project. This project involves a range of National Sports Organisations (NSOs) taking a lead in making their sports open to full participation. Examples of sports in the Hutt Valley that are part of the national No Exceptions leadership project include, Basketball NZ and Gym Sports.
Where NSOs are part of the national No Exceptions leadership programme, uptake of No Exceptions by local clubs and RSOs in the Hutt Valley has greater potential. For example, Gym Sports in the Hutt Valley have begun a self-assessment of their club’s accessibility, and they have got disabled people involved in this process.
SPARC hopes to see the regional and national No Exceptions link get stronger. A good indicator of this change will be when local clubs are picking up No Exceptions and influencing NSOs where the No Exceptions approach has not yet caught on.
Good practice lessons
Buy-in at the political level
Implementation of the No Exceptions strategy is currently being aided by political leadership in the Hutt Valley DHB and local councils. This is partly because the No Exceptions initiative is viewed as a policy that builds and strengthens communities. Political leaders want to contribute to this positive social change.
This kind of political buy-in is crucial (although making No Exceptions a political priority is far from assured). For example, following completion of the scoping report and the launch, implementation stalled somewhat. The reason for this was that it was necessary to first strengthen some links between the partnering organisations, particularly the two councils. Typically, if the weight of political leadership is behind the initiative, such links will develop more easily.
Updated | 23 Apr 2008.
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