Learn, Play, Thrive: A Sports-based Intervention Program Student Name Swinburne University of Technology PSY20005: Sports Psychology Tutor Name Due Date I declare that in submitting all work for this assessment I have read, understood and agree to the content and expectations of the assessment declaration.
Abstract Learn, Play, Thrive is an early intervention program that targets children (primary school age) from 'at risk' regions of Australia. The program will be 2-days a week (2 hours in duration) for 13 weeks and will alternate between several different sports (2 weeks per sport) with a placement program at the end to pair a young athlete with an appropriate sports club that provides the participants preferred sport as well as having a strong ethos. The program will be open to surrounding suburbs to encourage social capital, so participants can gain perspective/cultural diversity by engaging with people from different backgrounds. Coaches will be unpaid but gain funded qualifications through an internship style program (sports coaching Level 1 and 2) which imposes a return of service to the program (duration depending on what level of training they receive). There will be 2 permanent part-time paid staff (Qualified sports coach and Social worker). The social worker main function will be to facilitate a 20-30-minute character formation component (i.e. develop social skills etc.) provided during each 2-hour session as well as emotional support functions.
2 Learn, Play, Thrive: A Sports-based Intervention Program Background This paper will propose a sports intervention program (SIP) called Learn, Play, Thrive (LPT) that will utilize the diverse benefits of sport to generate change in a local disadvantaged community. LPT will focus on developing positive characteristics (i.e. socially ethical behaviours, strong decision-making and healthy lifestyle choices etc.) through social engagement and sports participation for 'at risk' children from disadvantaged communities of Australia. With 63% of Australians engaging in social sports and physical activity weekly (Australian Sports Commission, ASC, 2018), it is a popular platform with a high population interest that will naturally generate participation. There are also many mental and physical benefits of sports engagement. The physical benefits are widely known and range from lower prevalence of cardiovascular diseases, cancers, obesity, diabetes to increased immune function, muscle density, and aerobic power (Warburton et al., 2006). The psychological and cognitive benefits of physical exercise are a little more recent but range from reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety to increased cognitive performance, optimism, self-esteem, self-efficacy, sociability, and behavioural control (Warburton et al., 2006; Scifo et al., 2019; Whitley et al., 2019; Parker et al., 2017; Weinberg & Gould, 2019). These psychological benefits are evidenced in Moeijes (2018) and Moeijes (2019) which demonstrated through longitudinal studies that there were substantial improvements in prosocial behaviour for children who frequently engaged in sports. This relationship had a significant positive correlation indicating that more frequent engagement was associated with more psychological benefits.