19 Jun 2008

Australian administrators of one of the world’s oldest sports are poised to use their own information technology revolution to improve services for people with disabilities.

With support from the Australian Sports Commission’s (ASC) Disability Sport unit, Gymnastics Australia has developed an online education package for administrators, coaches and judges that aims to build awareness of ways in which people with disability can be included in the sport.

The online package, Managing Inclusion in Gymnastics, is just one of a number of strategies that Gymnastics Australia is employing to improve its services to people with disabilities.

This development is part of the national Sports CONNECT scheme initiated by the ASC to support national sporting organisations in increasing opportunities for people with disability to participate in sport.

Through Sports CONNECT, the ASC also supports national sporting organisations in developing a Disability Action Plan and provides funding assistance for some strategies under those plans such as Gymnastics Australia’s online education package on inclusiveness.

Gymnastics Australia’s Education Manager, Linda Pettit, said the Managing Inclusion in Gymnastics online package is one of the sport’s more promising disability-related strategies.

‘Just from the coaching perspective, this has the potential to reach up to 3500 coaches and judges,’ she said. ‘It’s not about the technical aspects of coaching a potential participant with a disability because coaches, through their accreditation processes, already have that. This is about raising awareness, changing attitudes and getting a social message across on inclusion.’

In developing the package Pettit said the organisation first asked itself where the problem areas were for them in servicing people with disability. ‘At least once a month I would get a call from a coach or an administrator saying they had turned away an interested participant with Down syndrome, for example, because they ‘don’t have the technical capacity or specialised classes’ to coach someone with Down syndrome. Obviously we needed to get the message out that coaches do have the technical capabilities, and ‘special’ classes are not always needed or even wanted to coach participants with a disability.’

Pettit said using an online model to deliver the training is innovative and requires the community to embrace change, but the sport felt confident it would work. ‘We’d previously delivered a risk management resource online that was mandated training across the whole [gymnastics] community. We worried that it might affect our membership, but the entire community embraced it and there was then the option to expand online work into other areas.

‘The support from the ASC definitely made the difference in getting this [online training] off the ground,’ Pettit said. ‘We run seven sports under the gymnastics umbrella and it’s a challenge to resource. What we wanted through Sports CONNECT, initially, was for gymnastics to be an option for participants with a disability.

‘We’re already getting phone calls. We want the doors of our clubs to be open to everyone and that means getting the inclusion message across to our administrators, judges and coaches.’

Among other Gymnastics Australia strategies is the Club 10 Quality Assurance Program, which provides gymnastics clubs with resources to consider why and how their service is accessible to people with disabilities; a forthcoming review of all National Coaching Accreditation Scheme and National Officiating Accreditation Scheme competencies to include working with participants with disabilities; and avoiding membership duplication and confusion by entering into a membership memorandum of understanding with Special Olympics Australia.

For more information on the ASC’s Sports CONNECT scheme visit ausport.gov.au/dsu