The Sport England Together Fund exists to help to reduce the negative impact of coronavirus and help community groups working with target audiences to grow and help more people be active.
There are four key audiences:
- Lower socio-economic groups
- Culturally diverse communities
- Disabled people
- People with long-term health conditions
Since its launch, the Together Fund has enabled community groups to continue to exist and engage with their communities, supporting people to be engaged and active.
For this next phase (Phase 4) GreaterSport will be prioritising funding across GM towards projects focussed on the following audiences due to the rise in inactivity rates through the pandemic:
- Disabled people and people with long-term health conditions aged 55-74 years (51.8%), more likely to be inactive than 75+ without (40%)
- People of South Asian or Chinese origin experienced an increase in inactivity of 10.7% (to 45.6%) compared to the average increase of 2.4% for all adults across the region
- The socio-economic gap (difference between NS SEC 1-2 &6-8) has increased by 5.5% and remained. This is a result of a minor increase in inactivity amongst higher social groups (+0.5%), NS-SEC 1-2, and a large increase amongst lower social groups (+6.0% to 43.4%), NS-SEC 6-8 is therefore a priority.