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Everyday Active in Kent
Everyday Active is a campaign created and developed by Active Kent & Medway, the Active Partnership for Kent and Medway, which is one of 43 Active Partnerships in England and hosted by Kent County Council.
Summary
Everyday Active is a campaign created and developed by Active Kent & Medway, the Active Partnership for Kent and Medway, which is one of 43 Active Partnerships in England and hosted by Kent County Council.
The campaign aims to increase participation in sport and physical activity and promote the benefits of a healthy lifestyle for 1.9 million residents of Kent, particularly amongst under-represented groups.
A searchable resource is available on the website helping people to find the perfect activity for their experience and confidence levels, and those that fit in more easily around everyday life, together with a free activity tracker.
The challenge
For a number of years there has been recognition of the inequalities across Kent in terms of specific groups that were less active, even pre COVID. These groups include those with disabilities, lower socio-economic groups and culturally diverse communities.
With this in mind the Partnership wanted to make it easier for people to find out about local, low cost accessible opportunities and also to support those who are having conversations daily with these specific individuals and groups in order for them to signpost them to local activity.
The solution
During 2019 consultation took place in areas with high levels of inactivity and social deprivation, notably Thanet, Swale (particularly the Isle of Sheppey) and Cranbrook near Tunbridge Wells. The consultation involved members of the public, healthcare professionals and other front-line workers. It was designed to understand the motivations and barriers to activity, how they could be catered for and addressed and additional support requirements that would make it easier for people to be active.
The consultation highlighted:
- there was a growing amount of information available about the benefits of physical activity and how much people should do, but it was all over the place and there was a suggested need for a ‘one stop shop’
- people didn’t know where to go to find out about local activities
- healthcare professionals and other front line workers didn’t know where to look for information and lacked confidence / knowledge to talk about physical activity with service users
- people wanted to see ‘people like me’ in their local communities doing activity
- communities and front line workers strongly felt that future developments, campaigns or products must be local and community based
- people were not clear on the recommended level of activity they should be doing, and that 150 minutes a week is intimidating from a standing start.
On the back of the consultation workshops were held with partners and Everyday Active emerged. The idea of a ‘one stop shop’ was formed, whereby local, low cost and accessible opportunities could be signposted from a central resource to adults and families, with consideration of those culturally diverse and those with disabilities and long term health conditions.
A social media consultant was appointed, together with (initially funded) Everyday Active (EA) Champions, each employed by a different type of organisation (in Thanet the leisure trust Your Leisure, the One You service in Tunbridge Wells and Sheppey Matters in Swale, a voluntary sector group).
The purpose of the EA Champion is to act as a point of contact but also connect physical activity and health and make links as well as keeping the community pages on the website up to date with appropriate opportunities.
The key elements of Everyday Active are:
- the website Everyday Active. The central resource for activities – countywide and local, stories, blogs, resources and other information. It also enables people to save down information and make a plan
- web progressive App, making it easier to access the website via a mobile phone
- social media - Facebook, X , Instagram and Linked In
- Everyday Active Champions
- Everyday Active Workshop
- Resources – EDA banners, postcards, posters and z card flyers – the latter encourage people to do 2 minutes three times a day, this would ensure that individuals would reach 30 minutes each working week
- Everyday Active Challenges using an activity tracker to manually log activities or connect to wearable Apps - FitBit, Strava and GoogleFit.
Discussions are ongoing in terms of links with social prescribing and other referral platforms, as well as the Talking Therapy service for Kent and diabetes programmes. Promotional material has been shared with libraries, NHS advisors and other partners.
The social media has subsequently been bought in house and the Champion network expanded, without funding, to cover the county. This now includes Champions employed through other leisure providers (Freedom Leisure, Maidstone Leisure Trust, TM Active) Medway Public Health, a charity (Sunflower House), Gravesham Borough Council and Canterbury Christchurch University.
The project aligns well to the overall vision of the Partnership which is ‘more people, more active, more often'.
A Played activity finder has also recently been introduced to assist the promotion of all activities, regardless of cost and audience. This is in the early stages of being populated.
The impact
Progress was hindered by the COVID pandemic, but initial monitoring and evaluation for the project was undertaken by the University of Kent in 2021/22.
The evaluation highlighted that the EDA website was viewed as appealing, easy to navigate, and importantly, a comprehensive source of information about physical activity in a single place. Consequently, individuals who may not have the local knowledge and expertise could easily access all necessary information in one place. Simplifying how knowledge and awareness of physical activity are communicated and shared is a key facilitator to the success of EDA.
Overall, the response has continued to be very positive amongst end users, healthcare professionals, social prescribers and other front line workers.
Social media numbers have been growing steadily (currently at 1005 Instagram followers, 669 on X and followed by over 780 people on Facebook). LinkedIn is a recent addition and already has 118 followers.
The Partnership has a monitoring and evaluation officer in post who will support ongoing measurement of impact, with more work planned, including looking at the end user journey. The challenge is ultimately to measure behaviour change.
Very positive feedback has been gained from the Everyday Active workshop which was developed based on a Sport England funded model devised in Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire. The workshop aims to upskill and give confidence to anyone that could talk to service users, family and friends about being more active.
Eight workshops have been delivered in 2023-24 and they have been well received, with very positive feedback given. They are delivered virtually and face to face, via open and more bespoke closed sessions (for example, delivered to NHS Health Check team).
“We really enjoyed the session and came away inspired to do more for our clients – and ourselves!”
“Very clearly presented workshop. Both presenters clearly knowledgeable around physical activity, and their natural passion for it shined through.”
“Very informative and would benefit most people to listen to this workshop”.
In addition there have been links into the Physical Activity Clinical Champions (PACC) training programme in order to upskill healthcare professionals, with Everyday Active being promoted.
How is the new approach being sustained?
The Partnership initially provided upfront funding from their reserves but now the campaign is up and running the costs are minimal and relate only to the ongoing maintenance of the website. Social media and Monitoring & Evaluation is being embedded within the Partnership’s core team rather than being outsourced, and the EA Champions are now voluntary roles, come without cost and are therefore more sustainable.
In 2023, a part time Everyday Active Officer was appointed to support growth and further development. The Officer is supported by other existing team members to aid promotion and collaboration.
Areas of expansion currently being considered include a small grant to support the Champions in the provision of low cost, accessible activities, reaching the target audiences, where need is identified, more information relevant to children and young people and further growth of the team of EA champions. Some areas might see more than one EA Champion. An animation for screens, for example in GP surgeries, has also been mocked up for testing.
Lessons learnt
- The community engagement work at the start is vital in order to get buy in and involvement from a wider range of partners so that they come on the journey with you and help to spread the word.
- There is a fine line between inspiration/motivation and realism e.g. for a single mum with five children activity needs to be built into their everyday lives.
- With hindsight we would have given more consideration at the outset to monitoring and evaluation.
- Nothing happens overnight – make small changes and marginal gains incrementally.
- An approach that appears to make a difference is people receiving a nudge from different directions for example people hearing the same messages about being more active a number of times from different partners.
- The importance of people seeing people like them in their community and making it as local as possible so that it is relatable and relevant.
- It has helped to open doors with healthcare professionals by giving us something tangible that they, and their service users, can use and benefit from.
- It’s the combination of things that works – having the website, physical resources cards, resource into GP surgeries, local support with the EA champion as well as the range of activities provided so that people have lots of choice about activity they can do.
- Walking people through what’s going to happen when they get to an activity session can take away the fear and reluctance of going along.
- The systems approach and partnership working is vital. A website alone cannot increase activity levels but it is all of the work and support that is done around it.
Contact
Andrea Murphy, Active Partnership Manager, Kent County Council.