DSR Annual Report 2010/2011
2010/2011 reports and financial statements, including the year's highlights, Director General's report, corporate overview and grants approved.
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There is a growing recognition of the value of sport and recreation as a cost effective way to achieve important community building goals. This was clearly demonstrated by the state government’s $20 million commitment to the Sport 4 All program in the May budget.
Sport 4 All is about bringing more young people into the community fold through the agency of local sport and recreation clubs. This project will be specifically targeted at families that would not normally be able to afford club fees.
The very success of this project will inevitably put added pressure on our community clubs and their hard working volunteers. To mitigate these stresses, funds were also committed to recruiting and retaining a new generation of volunteers.
Other highlights for the year included:
- The launch of ActiveSmart Geraldton.
- The opening of the State Rugby Centre.
- The incorporation of Nature Play WA.
- The success of the Northbridge Youth Diversion and Engagement Project.
- Sporting events for drought affected farmers and their wives and partners.
- Recreation camps numbers up again.
- Strategic Directions 5 published.
I have chosen these highlights out of a long list as they illustrate the diversity of the work we do at the Department of Sport and Recreation. We’re about physical activity, we’re about facility development, we’re about strategic leadership for our industry, we’re about healthier and happier children and communities.
Of particular importance this year was the publication of Strategic Directions 5. This document is the fifth in the series of documents that have been coordinated by our department in partnership with the sport and recreation industry. The document has been developed to:
- Provide vision and direction for WA’s sport and recreation industry.
- Increase stakeholder understanding of emerging issues.
- Guide strategic planning processes for sport and recreation organisations.
- Better inform government of stakeholder aspirations.
- The document is particularly important in that it identifies a number of key challenges for our industry and department. These challenges include:
- The current affordability barrier that is preventing many young people from low socio-economic families participating in sport and recreation.
- Influencing the early childhood agenda to ensure the importance of ‘play’ and development of fundamental movement skills are embedded as a core component of early childhood development.
- Innovative solutions are required to engage young people in volunteering.
- Industry leaders must advance the advocacy effort for the value-add that sport and recreation delivers for mainstream public policy – specifically community development, health, education, environment and justice.
- Fundamental shortcomings in open space quantity, quality and functionality.
While these challenges have been identified for the next five years, this year has already seen DSR involved in a number of initiatives that are working to meet these challenges.
Our work with culturally and linguistically diverse (CaLD) communities in Perth’s South East Corridor and the City of Stirling has linked many recently arrived migrants with sporting clubs, thus working on the affordability barrier.
This year also saw the incorporation of Nature Play WA, a DSR inspired and funded organisation that is working to increase the amount of unstructured play time outside that children engage in. In the Sport 4 All package $2 million was devoted to Nature Play WA.
The creation of this organisation demonstrates our department’s commitment to shifting community program provision from government to the not for profit sector. It is also a demonstration of our support for the recreation sector.
Our 5,000 sport and recreation clubs depend on volunteers.
This year was the 10th anniversary of the International Year of Volunteers (IYV+10) and saw our department run a number of important events and initiatives to help clubs honour, and thus recruit and retain, volunteers.
These initiatives ranged from awards nights for coaches and officials and special e-cards for volunteer mums, to state-wide volunteer breakfasts and the distribution of recognition certificates.
Funding from the Sport 4 All package will increase the intensity of our work with volunteers over the next four years.
The Northbridge Youth Diversion and Engagement Project has been running for almost two years but this year saw its true value being highlighted. The objective of this project was to decrease the number of young people being picked up in Northbridge on a Friday and Saturday night. The solution was simple – provide these young people with something more fun to do than take the train to Perth. To that end, our department funded a number of community groups including the PCYC to run sport-based programs on Friday and Saturday nights in Midland and Armadale. The result – the numbers of children picked up in Northbridge have halved. This is another great example of the power of sport and recreation to make our communities safer.
Our focus this year has been on ‘people’ projects, but these projects have to be balanced with ‘place’ projects because for people to participate in sport and recreation it is essential that they have somewhere, a place, to go.
The new State Rugby Centre was completed on time and under budget. This centre will be the new home of rugby in Western Australian and the Western Force. Other facility highlights included the commencement of planning for the new headquarters for netball and the commitment of $2 million for planning for the WAIS high performance service hub.
Our department’s recreation camps have also continued to provide enjoyable and accessible amenities for the community to be physically active in.
This coming financial year will present our department with many challenges. The announcement of the location for new major stadium will require us to create a new team to progress this great initiative. The new $20 million in funding for Sport 4 All will also present challenges and opportunities to the entire department, local governments and the sports as we work to link literally tens of thousands of young people to community sporting and recreation clubs.
These two projects are both concrete and symbolic evidence of the growing opportunities and great value to our community provided through sport and recreation.
Ron Alexander
Director General
September 2010
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