All In! Belgravia Foundation’s National Project.
Belgravia Foundation and Swimming Australia are trialing an innovative new program called All In!
Belgravia Foundation have been awarded funding from Swimming Australia’s Community Swimming Partnerships Program Partner under the SportAUS Participation Grants Program to continue trials and upscale All In! across a minimum of 10 Australian Belgravia Leisure venues. This trial is an extension of earlier work completed by the same collaborating group in 2020/2021, which was heavily affected by COVID-19.
All In! is an aquatic program aimed at improving swim teacher confidence and capacity to better welcome, support and include people with a disability, people of cultural diversity and First Nations people into aquatic experiences.
Uniquely, this innovative program has directly addressed previously seemingly intractable challenges related to inclusion in learn-to-swim and aquatic programs. These challenges include the cost of training, accessibility of training, alignment with evidence-based practice, and addressing the training needs of learn to swim and the aquatic team as expressed and revealed through research.
The All In! program is compiled of three critical components:
Swim Teacher online training:
Qualified swim teachers complete online training tailored around people with intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorder. The purpose is transform the way in which we train our swim teachers.
Mentor project:
The mentor project coincides with All In, helping transform how Belgravia train their swim teachers, with several mentoring and mentee resources and locally available support to empower swim teachers to feel more confident and inclusive of all.
Subsidised Swimming Lessons:
8-week swimming program with participants enduring 1 x 30-minute swimming lesson across eight weeks with funding from Swimming Australia incentivizing participation.
There is compelling evidence to confirm that workplace personnel – whether paid or volunteer – are the main enabler, or barrier, to the inclusion of people with a disability in sport and recreation. Providing swim teachers with additional knowledge, understanding and on-site support through mentoring gives them improved skills to support the needs of their participants, no matter how diverse. These improved skills lead to more opportunities for under-represented groups to participate and create positive outcomes for the participant. Selected swim teachers and their leaders are currently undertaking online training before welcoming participants into the 8-week aquatic program beginning in July 2022.
Through this trial program, evidence will be collected to measure the impact of training on swim teachers and to also measure the outcomes achieved by participants over the 8-week period. If successful, All In! will be scaled up across more Belgravia Leisure venues to reach more people and have a greater impact.
Belgravia Foundation would like to thank Swimming Australia for their collaborative approach and contribution to the All In! Trial, and look forward to the 8-week subsidised lessons beginning in the month of July.