Dear Friends,
Welcome to our June update, a month that historically marked the beginning of summer at Sporting Chance and - as a charity founded by a former professional footballer and whose services in our early days were predominantly used by professional footballers - a summer that usually reflected the change in pace you see in football clubs at this time of year.
Back when I joined the charity in 2012, our education department would traditionally experience an ‘off season’, the number of clinical referrals we received as a charity would be impacted as players spent time away from their place of work and across our organisation - perhaps with the exception of our residential clinic - there was a noticeable shift in our focus towards preparing for the upcoming ‘season’.
Fast forward to 2022 and the charity is a very different place. We have many more stakeholders across a wider range of sports with their own seasons and periods of peak activity. The consultancy projects we undertake with various clubs and sporting bodies are constantly evolving pieces of work which require year-round attention. Our education department is an altogether different mechanism compared to 10 years ago, now based out of the University of York and - as you might be aware from our previous Friends Of Sporting Chance update - currently going through a process to recruit facilitators to grow its reach and the range of sessions it can deliver. If you’d like to know more about that initiative and be a hands-on part of Sporting Chance’s ongoing mission to improve mental health provision within sport, you can find out more here.
We are also buoyed by the number of organisations that approach us each year to explore the possibility of working more closely with us, and in doing so, provide the funding and expertise to grow the number of athletes we can support. This month I am delighted to welcome the Netball Players Association to Sporting Chance as a new stakeholder. Sporting Chance services will now be an additional part of the support pathway for all netball players with NPA membership and we will be working closely with NPA Managing Director Liz Bloor and Welfare Services Lead Dr Emma Kavanagh over the coming months to develop what I firmly believe will be an exciting and mutually beneficial relationship.
I hope you enjoy your summer,
Colin Bland, CEO, Sporting Chance