€18,000 and 'Something for Everyone'
A town of about 9,400 people has one local-authority leisure centre, a GAA pitch and no other indoor facility. The centre's 'Get Active' consultation drew 480 responses. Only 21% of local adults report meeting the 150-minutes-a-week moderate activity guideline. Three groups reported the lowest participation: women aged 45–64 (12% active), young men aged 16–24 (active at school but 70% drop out by 19) and people with a disability (6% active). Asked what stopped them, 61% of the women ticked 'it's not for people like me', 27% of all respondents had no car, and 44% of people with a disability said they did not know whether the building was accessible. The centre has €18,000 for one year of inclusion work and free off-peak hall hire (weekdays 09:00–16:00). The board wants 'something for everyone' and has asked you, as the newly appointed community sports development officer, to recommend where the money goes first.
1. The board wants a programme that touches all three groups. Using the consultation data, identify which group should get the largest share of the €18,000, name the dominant type of constraint for each of the three groups, and justify your choice.
Read the worked answer
The three groups are not equally expensive to reach, so the answer is not simply 'the lowest percentage'.
Dominant constraints
- Women 45–64 - mainly intrapersonal (61% say 'not for people like me': confidence, body image, feeling judged) with a strong interpersonal layer (nobody to go with) and a structural layer (27% have no car; weekday evenings mean childcare).
- Young men 16–24 - mostly structural (cost, transport) with an interpersonal drop-off: they stop when the school team stops, because there is no informal, non-competitive offer.
- People with a disability - mostly structural (access, changing facilities, staff confidence), but note 44% simply do not know if the building is accessible. That is an information gap, not an €18,000 gap.
Priority: women 45–64. They are the largest absolute group in the town, their participation rate is near the floor at 12%, their main barrier is one a supported, women-only, daytime programme is designed to break, and the centre already owns the two assets needed - a free hall from 09:00 to 16:00 and female staff. The disability group should not be ignored, but the highest-value first spend is the quick, cheap access audit and access statement (see next task), with the larger programme money going where it can shift the most people.
Tell the board plainly that splitting €18,000 three ways buys three half-programmes that nobody attends twice, which is how inclusion budgets usually fail.
2. Set out the intervention you would fund first, the delivery details that would make or break it, and the measures you would report to the board at 12 months.
Read the worked answer
First intervention: a 12-week, twice-weekly 'Come and Try' block for women 45–64, weekdays 10:00–11:00 in the free hall, €12,000 of the budget, with a €600 quick win alongside it: a photographed access audit, a published access statement and a quiet-hour swim.
Delivery details that decide success
- Time and place: 10:00 on a Tuesday/Thursday beats 19:00, because it avoids childcare and the dark, and the hall is free.
- Who leads: a female instructor, same face every week. Continuity is the intervention; a rota of strangers is not.
- Language and framing: 'no Lycra, no mirrors, no weighing' in the flyer; a beginner block that starts with walking and light resistance rather than an aerobics class.
- Social hook: participants bring a friend or are paired as buddies in week one, because the interpersonal barrier is as big as the confidence one.
- Recruitment where they already are: GP surgery, primary-school gate, supermarket, parish newsletter - not the centre's own Facebook page, which reaches people who already attend.
Measures at 12 months
- Process: number of unique participants against a target of 60.
- Retention: % still attending at week 12 (target 60%) and at month 9.
- Outcome: % meeting at least 90 minutes a week, and a repeat of the original barrier question with identical wording so the before-and-after is comparable.
- Cost per participant retained, so the board can compare this with the next bid.
Report the failures too - a 35% drop-out tells the board more than a satisfaction score.