Practitioner Guides


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The Mentro Allan National Partnership have created a series of practitioner guides to support people implementing projects in the field. These guides will be of use to anyone that is interested in Physical Activity, Health, Equality, Natural Environment, Volunteering, Project management and Participant led projects.

Case Study Lessons English
As the fourteen Mentro Allan projects around Wales came to the end of their Big Lottery funding, a set of 27 case studies were gathered together, covering a range of different aspects of their development as well as exploring the lessons that had been learned. This practitioner guide brings together some of the common themes that emerged from the learning that answer the question: What made the participant-led nature of the projects effective for the participants?

Disability Practitioner Guide English 2011
There were fourteen Mentro Allan (MA) projects across Wales, running between 2006 and 2011. The aim of the projects was to learn about the most effective ways to support sedentary people to be physically active using the outdoor environment. The projects had a range of target groups: young people, older people, women, BME (Black and Minority Ethnic) communities, people with physical and learning disabilities, mental health service users, carers, people at risk of rural isolation and people with low incomes. Projects were participant-led, with project development guided by feedback and ideas from the participants. Feedback was gathered both formally, through regular evaluation events using a participatory group discussion process, and informally, through chatting to people during the activity sessions.

This guide outlines the lessons that have been learnt for engaging and working with people with a disability to be physically active in an outdoor environment. It outlines some of the issues that participants, project coordinators and activity providers face when organising outdoor physical activity, and draws on the lessons learnt from Mentro Allan research to show how they can be overcome in order to make services accessible for different groups. During the five years of the programme, Mentro Allan projects worked with children and adults with physical and sensory impairments, learning difficulties, and autism spectrum disorder.