Bringing Sport to Children With Special Needs Erasmus Project

Project Title

Bringing Sport to Children With Special Needs

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Disabilities – special needs; Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

The initiation of the NeedSport project was based to our findings that several scientific researchers have proven that sports activities have many beneficial effects on children with special needs. Sport is also one of the most important tools for the equal integration of children with special needs into society and helps society to accept people with special needs as an active part of the society and help overcome prejudices. Although there have been some improvement in inclusion of special need children into sports activities, researches still show that the progress and literature in this area are still progressing too slowly and children with special needs are still left out in sports despite the great advantages they could gain.
The main objective of our project was to develop a guideline and application for teachers, trainers, coaches, parents that work or are in connection to children with special needs containing concrete ideas, recommendation and examples of suitable sports activities for children with special needs and to improve the skills of the target groups in the field of integrating special need children into sports activities.
The participant in the project were teachers, PE teachers, counsellors and accompanying persons, working in regular and special need schools, trainers and coaches in sports organizations, parents of special need children and the final target group were the special need children. Over 60 teachers/trainers/coaches were directly involved in the project, whether in form of participation in international activities (meetings, training), local activities, writing or testing exercise, creating videos, taking part in internal trainings, and even a higher number of the target groups was involved in the project indirectly through dissemination activities of project partners.
The project included development and testing of sport exercise adapted in accordance to specific special needs of children and various sport categories. These exercise were added to the final guideline developed in the project, which is divided into two parts: a theoretical one where the benefits of sports on children with special needs and its benefits considering inclusion of special need children are described, and a more practical part with the exercise developed in the project and adapted to achieve a bigger inclusion of special need children into sport activities are described. At the same time the content of the developed exercise was placed into an Android application, also developed in the project, where users can instantly find suggestions for exercise adapted according to the special needs of children and according to sport category. Apart from testing the developed exercise during the project, the participating organizations were also testing the developed Android application. The project also included three transnational meetings in person, while the blast meeting and the training were carried out online due to different restrictions and regulations in the participating countries and organizations. Also due to Covid situation the partners decided to do extra work on intellectual outputs and therefore developed videos where all the developed exercises are demonstrated and can therefore be used online at any time and any interested party and can be used as an online tool by teachers, coaches, and parents, which showed to be very useful during the periods when schools and sport centres were shut down and will be a very useful online tool for a future use. The project also involved the development of evaluation/assessment forms for teachers, trainers, parents and teachers so that the developed material was evaluated throughout the project to achieve development of the material of the highest quality.
The project not only produced a useful guide and Android application for teachers, trainers, coaches parents on how to adapt sport activities according to special needs of children and to ensure a higher inclusion of special need children into sport activities, which will be available for free to general public in the future, but also ensured a very high number of extra sport lessons and activities for special need children from participating organizations and created stronger links among participating schools with local sports organizations and the other way around and cooperation that will last long after the project is finished. With the help of the project there is now a higher number of sport trainers and coaches that are no longer to include special need children into their sport activities and at the same time parents of special need children have less doubts about their children participating in various sport activities.

Project Website

http://www.needsport.net

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 263863,75 Eur

Project Coordinator

LJUDSKA UNIVERZA, ZAVOD ZA IZOBRAZEVANJE IN KULTURO, ROGASKA SLATINA & Country: SI

Project Partners

• 1o Eidiko Dimotiko Sxoleio Patras
• UNIVERSIDADE DE COIMBRA
• IES La Puebla
• OSNOVNA SKOLA JOSIPA MATOSA
• Elio Artic
• GDYNSKIE CENTRUM SPORTU
• ASSOCIACAO PARA O DESENVOLVIMENTO DO DESPORTO JOVEM – ADDJ