10 minute read
Inclusive Football
INCLUSIVE FOOTBALL COMING YOUR WAY
DRM spoke to Baroness Sue Campbell about how the Football Your Way campaign in encouraging disabled people to come back to the sport, their way.
With such a challenging time for many sports, how has the pandemic impacted disabled football, from grassroots to the elite players?
I think it is pretty common knowledge the pandemic has disproportionately impacted people with disabilities, on [their] confidence to go out and their vulnerability in terms of getting covid. We have seen a drop off in participation, which is now recovering, but there is still a lot of work to do to get back to where we were. In terms of the Talent Pathway, there has not been as dramatic an impact, simply because those are committed individuals, but we weren’t able to access them as regularly. And then for our national teams, a lot of camps that should’ve happened at St George’s Park didn’t happen because of Covid.
It also gave us a really good time to take a solid look at our own strategy and think through what we were doing, whether it was good enough, and what more we could do. We had the campaign Football Your Way, which was our way to try and get people to start thinking about coming back after Covid and encouraging them to think about getting out, being active and getting involved again.
We had the campaign Football Your Way, which was our way to try and get people to start thinking about coming back after Covid and encouraging them to think about getting out, being active and getting involved again. And then we have developed a strategy; our passionate belief is that some people will want to compete, some people will want to become national players, but there are an awful lot of people that will want to play recreationally, play for friendship, play for social reasons, and we want to make sure that we are getting both right.
To encourage disabled people back into sport and football, England Football has launched the Football Your Way campaign, which you mentioned above, can you tell us a little bit more about what the campaign is and who it will impact?
I think conscious of the fact that we have seen this drop-off, we felt it was really important to make the point that football could be played for friendship, for fun, socially, even on your own. It didn’t necessarily mean you had to go back and join a team if you weren’t feeling confident about going out or going somewhere.
Therefore the campaign is for every disabled person, wherever you are at, and wherever you wish to go with football.
It’s a really simple campaign, which achieved second place in the UEFA Awards. We were really pleased, and it had a really positive impact in terms of encouraging people to get the football out again and start to play.
With 78% of disabled people feeling worried and 42% of people with a health condition reporting high levels of anxiety about Covid-19, how does the Football Your Way Hub build confidence in those that do have worries still about the pandemic, to get out there and play football?
We are not saying you have to leave your home or you’ve got to go on public transport, a couple of things people are frightened of or anxious about, to enjoy the game. You can literally go into your back garden and create activity in your own home.
We all know that [physical activity] has a huge impact on our mental wellbeing. Getting active is a really good way to tackle anxiety and if your fear is of meeting others or going on public transport, then start really simply. Things are getting easier, but some of those anxieties are deep seated in people now and we have to be conscious of that and be very patient with people, and very supportive. We are not expecting you to go leaping about with lots of people in a strange environment; but rather that football can help you regain that feeling of self esteem that comes with confidence, all of those things have been hit badly by Covid pandemic.
For us, football is probably one of the simplest sports to play, both on your own and with others. All you need is a ball, there’s not masses of equipment. Unless, of course, you are going to play seriously, you will want football boots and shin guards and all [the equipment]. But if all you want to do is go out into the back garden with a ball and just have some fun, that’s not difficult to do. That is the great beauty of the game really, it can be really simple.
As an advocate for disabled sport, what drives you to make positive and inclusive change for disabled people in sport, and particularly football?
In this country football is the national game. It has massive exposure on television; we have massive opportunities to play. Every young person, whether that is a young girl, someone with a disability, or someone from a different culture, should be given an opportunity to play and to feel the huge pride that we have in our national teams.
I am driven by the belief that this is our national game and we want to make it as accessible as possible, to understand different motivations to play or to watch. You might be an elite athlete that wants to be at the very top of their game or you might just want to play recreationally and that is all you want to do— meet your friends, have a nice social time and play some football. Our job as the FA is to make sure that all of those opportunities are there, so that whatever motivates you, there is a place you can go to play or there is a group you can go and join.
A lot of the work is making sure the providers are thinking about accessibility, thinking about being welcoming. You have got to make people feel like they belong. Whatever the disability we want to give you an opportunity, it doesn’t matter if it’s an invisible or visible disability, we want you to have the opportunity to play the game, watch the game, enjoy the game and be a part of it.
What do you hope the ongoing benefits will be for creating the Football Your Way campaign? And what do you envision for the future of disability inclusive sport?
A lot of pioneers in this area have done some good work, long before I started trying to get involved in this. This has given us a foundation. I hope that this strategy will truly embed football for all people, in our communities, in our clubs, in our society, and be a beacon for what is possible, not just in sport, but also in life. We shouldn’t see it as someone else’s problem or someone else’s issue, it’s our problem, it’s our issue and we need to own it. We need to embrace it. We need to provide the opportunities for people to be involved.
By 2024, I hope we will have moved everything forward. We certainly won’t be at the end of the journey, we will very much still be in chapter one. But I hope that we can build on that, post 2024, and keep building till we have embedded this in a way where we don’t have to think about it anymore. It would be great if in a few years time inclusive football is a natural part of what the Football Association does, and whether you want to be an elite player or recreational player, there is an opportunity for you— then we will think of the campaign as having been successful.
Website: englandfootball.com/play/
disability-football
Twitter: @England
Facebook: @EnglandTeam
Are you an intermittent catheter user? of CISC users experience pain either before or after CISC1 Do you experience pain or discomfort?
A signi cant proportion of men and women nd themselves in a position of not being able to urinate normally. People with voiding problems frequently nd themselves having to make use of a catheter to drain their bladder when it lls and thereby engaging in regular clean intermittent self-catheterisation. The experience of performing self-catheterisation, while straightforward for some, can be both di cult and painful for others.1
Over the years, various strategies have been explored to reduce trauma to the urethra when catheterising. This has included applying a gel lubricant to an uncoated catheter4 and creating catheters with a hydrophilic coating5 which the majority of people who self-catheterise use today. It has been demonstrated however that during withdrawal, hydrophilic coated catheters can stick to the lining of the urethra. This is because the hydrophilic coating transforms from being highly slippery when fully wet to being adhesive in nature when the coating begins to dry out. This e ect has been proven to cause stickiness in the urethra which can lead to trauma or bleeding.6,7,8 Additionally, the coating on the hydrophilic coated catheters as well as the gel lubricant applied to uncoated catheters can leave behind residuals, making cathing messy and leaving the user feeling unclean.10
of people using hydrophilic coated catheters had blood in their urine 3
of users rated GentleCath™ Glide with FeelClean™ Technology better than their usual catheter for comfort 9 of study participants said “I have pain (the catheterisation is painful)”2
To address these issues, ConvaTec have launched the GentleCath™ range of catheters which incorporate pioneering FeelClean™ Technology. GentleCath™ catheters with FeelClean™ Technology use a next generation material that is intrinsically slippery when wet but without the need for a coating. They have low levels of friction during insertion and do not become sticky when removed thereby reducing the risk of trauma or bleeding and the pain this can cause.10 Without a coating, GentleCath™ catheters create minimal mess and leave behind less residue than other catheters.10 So users can feel clean inside and out, all day.
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1. Guinet-Lacoste A, Jousse M, Tan E, Caillebot M, Le Breton F, Amarenco G. Intermittent catheterization di culty questionnaire (ICDQ): A new tool for the evaluation of patient di culties with clean intermittent self-catheterization. Neurourol Urodyn. 2016 Jan;35(1):85-9. 2. Roberson D, Newman DK, Ziemba JB, Wein A, Stambakio H, Hamilton RG, Callender L, Holderbaum L, King T, Jackson A, Tran T, Lin G, Smith AL. Results of the patient report of intermittent catheterization experience (price) study. Neurourol Urodyn. 2021 Sep 13. 3. Rognoni C, Tarricone R. Intermittent catheterisation with hydrophilic and non-hydrophilic urinary catheters: systematic literature review and meta-analyses. BMC Urol. 2017 Jan 10;17(1):4. 4. Wyndaele JJ, Maes D. Clean intermittent self-catheterization: a 12-year followup. J Urol. 1990 May;143(5):906-8. 5. Waller L, Jonsson O, Norlén L, Sullivan L. Clean intermittent catheterization in spinal cord injury patients: long-term followup of a hydrophilic low friction technique. J Urol. 1995 Feb;153(2):345-8. 6. Fader M, Moore KN, Cottenden AM, Pettersson L, Brooks R, Malone-Lee J. Coated catheters for intermittent catheterization: smooth or sticky? BJU Int. 2001 Sep;88(4):373-7. 7. Bager K and Thingbak FSW (Coloplast). A urinary catheter. (WIPO (PCT) Patent No. WO2020160738). World Intellectual Property Organization 2020. 8. Lundgren J, Bengtsson O, Israelsson A, Jönsson AC, Lindh AS, Utas J. The importance of osmolality for intermittent catheterization of the urethra. Spinal Cord. 2000 Jan;38(1):45-50. 9. A Multi-Centre Clinical Investigation to Assess the Performance of GentleCathTM Glide Intermittent Catheters. Study U378 GentleCathTM Glide Final Report. July 2018. Data on File. ConvaTec Inc. 10. In Vitro data on le, WHR 16933 TA 1369 AP-034657-GB ©2022 ConvaTec. ®/™ indicate trademarks of the ConvaTec group of companies.
