Fun & fitness: A community sport’s development programme for adults with learning disabilities

Abstract

In the context of the significant health inequalities experienced by individuals with learning disabilities, Greenwich Community Learning Disability Team have worked in partnership with the Royal Borough of Greenwich’s (RBG) and leisure provider Better to offer bespoke exercise groups for people with learning disabilities in the borough. This programme, titled ‘Fun & Fitness’ was offered initially on Zoom from February 2021, in the context of Covid-19, before transferring to a community leisure centre in July 2021. The programme and approach have been developed with input from a range of professional disciplines and service user involvement and has been supported by multiple funding grants. A range of measures relating to physical and mental health, and quality of life have been repeated periodically through the programme. To date 108 group members have participated and a range of positive feedback has been received. Reflections of the process to date are offered, including in relation to the limitations of the approach and learning points, as well as ideas for further developing the project.Easy read summaryPeople with learning disabilities are not as healthy as most people.Part of this is because of difficulties accessing physical activities in the community.Exercise groups have been developed in Greenwich for people with learning disabilities. These groups are called ‘Fun & Fitness’.At first, they were on Zoom because of Covid-19. Now they are in a leisure centre.Over 100 people have attended at least one session and there are over 60 regular members.People say they like the groups. They like the fun and doing things with other people.We have been checking the health of people who come to the group.We want to see if the group improves people’s health.This is important because lots of people with learning disabilities have more health problems and this can cause them to die younger.We have plans to run more groups and help people do more sports and exercise.