About Sport4All - Our Inclusion Program
The Sport4All team is made up of people with disability and lived connection to disability. We are passionate about sport and want every Australian with disability to have the same opportunity to participate in sport anyway they choose to.
The Sport4All inclusive sports program exists to give people with disability the opportunity to participate in sport, at both a club and school level, when, where, and how they choose. Sport4All has been developed, designed, and is delivered by people with disability and lived experience. Our goal is to build a movement that enables clubs and schools to be inclusive and provide accessible environments for people of all disability, all ages, all roles, and in any sport.
Our purpose is to give people with disability the opportunity to have choice and control on where and how they participate in club and school sports, whether it’s through playing, coaching, administration or any other role.
Our Story.
People with disability face many challenges, one of them being access to community and school sport. In 2019, the Federal Minister for Sport approached Dylan Alcott AO and Get Skilled Access with one goal – increase the number of people with disability in sport communities across the country. We discovered that sports clubs and schools were curious to include people with disability but didn’t know where or how to start.
That’s how Sport4All came to life!
We brought together various sporting organisations, levels of government, teaching organisations, and members of the disability community to have input on the Sport4All inclusive program, with the hope of designing a program that everyone in the sporting community could get onboard with.
We also identified the significance of having a dedicated person within the local council to serve as a point of contact for clubs and schools – referred to as the Inclusion Coach. Our Inclusion Coaches are people with disability and lived experience with strong community connections. They provide valuable support in increasing the participation of people with disability in their respective sport and active recreation communities.
The Sport4All pilot program saw five local governments across metropolitan and regional Victoria involved and witness the participation of over 500 clubs and schools. This initiative resulted in improved accessibility to sports for individuals with disabilities within clubs and schools. This was achieved through confidence-building activities, community sports days, and increased overall participation.
Sport4All Goes Nationwide!
The next evolution of our inclusion program was to ensure that Sport4All’s benefits reached every Australian who loves participating in sports, how and when they choose.
Sport4All has partnered with the Australian Sports Commission to embark on a nationwide journey. Our aim is to reach communities across all states and territories, continuing to support clubs, schools, and active recreation communities. We provide them with the knowledge and confidence to foster equitable access for people with disability from all backgrounds.
We recognised that expanding nationally would open doors to groups we hadn’t worked with before. Therefore, the program’s national expansion was a collaborative effort, co-designed with insights from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) communities with disabilities. Their experiences, beliefs, and deep connection to sports played a pivotal role in shaping this initiative. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to these individuals for their candidness, vulnerability, understanding, and patience. We are committed to continuous learning in this space.
Our unwavering commitment remains rooted in empowering people with disability to choose and control how they participate in sport. We firmly believe that everyone deserves a level playing field.
Why Sport4All?
Playing sport is not a privilege but a right for every Australian, including the 5.5 million people, or roughly 21% of Australians, living with disability. Like most Australians, we love sport and being involved in the community through activity. We identified a significant gap in the understanding and capability of sporting clubs and schools knowing how to include people with disability effectively in sport, not because they didn’t want to, but they didn’t always know how.
Participation is not just about playing in the game. Participation might include coaching, administration, volunteering as well as the many other roles that help make a sporting community run smoothly. That’s why we developed Sport4All – to support clubs and schools understand which inclusion areas need focus and what steps they can take to support the inclusion of people with disability from all communities.
The Sport4All program is fully funded by the Australian Government, in partnership with the Australian Sports Commission and is designed and delivered by Get Skilled Access. Local government areas in metropolitan, regional, and remote Australia partner with Sport4All to employ Inclusion Coaches, who help play a vital role in growing the impact of the program. These Inclusion Coaches have lived experiences of disability, and work within their local communities to deliver the program using culturally informed practices and resources to support in creating inspiring and inclusive sporting environments.
Our Vision.
Inclusive sporting communities so that every person with disability has access to sport and feels like they belong.
Our Mission.
To give sporting communities the knowledge and passion to include all people with disability in sport.
Our Values.
- At the centre of Sport4All are people with disability and lived connection
- People with disability are always involved in our decision making
- Employing people with disability is very important to us
- Access and belonging for people with disability is our priority
- Our relationships are diverse, meaningful, and ongoing
- We listen with compassion to the point of view of our stakeholders
- We seek feedback on our work to make sure we are always informed and up to date
- We are always looking to meet new people so we can hear new and diverse voices
- We maintain and uphold new and existing relationships
- We find solutions by being flexible, and open
- We don’t let fixed thinking get in the way of welcoming and belonging
- We look for ways to bring people on board and update Sport4All
- We are open to changing the way we do something to include everyone
- Although we are flexible, we don’t negotiate on accessibility and belonging
- All people are equal when we consider accessibility and inclusion
- We recognise that people with disability have diverse stories and cultures
- We are committed to listening and learning so that our work is safe for everyone
- Our information comes in ways that are accessible, inclusive, and culturally respectful
- Accessibility is our priority for interactions and meeting places
- We are open about accessibility and inaccessibility
- We are impact focused, not problem focused.
- We hold ourselves and each other responsible for building a culture where people belong.
- We are designed so that people with disability can choose how they want to be involved
- We ensure that all people with disability are represented in our work
