HOW FOOTBALL IS BUILDING SELF ESTEEM AND MAKING EVERY PLAYER COUNT

Over 13,000 children, young people and adults with disabilities have been introduced to football through our Every Player Counts programme.

Today for International Day of Persons with Disabilities we be looking at some of the stories behind that statistics. The programme, which is co-funded by EFL Trust and Wembley National Stadium Trust (WNST), has now been running for 5 years and offers the benefits of playing football to people with a wide range of disabilities.

The stories we will showcase today are from people of differing ages and cover a range of disabilities. However, the common thread running each personal journey is of a struggle to find a way to fit in and how playing football has allowed each individual to build their confidence, self-esteem and form friendships. This in turn, transferred into their school, work and personal life, has opened up a range of opportunities.

28 EFL Club Community Organisations run Every Player Counts programmes that are tailored to the specific needs of their local community, covering a wide range of disability programmes including, but not restricted to, powerchair football, football for visual impairment, and learning difficulties. Although individual programmes will differ from club to club, the emphasis is always on increasing participation, improving health and championing the social benefits of taking part in football.

All this is possible thanks to Wembley National Stadium Trust who in 2016 made a £1.1m, donation over three year – what was their largest investment and their first England-wide grant. A further £500,000 in 2019, plus funding from the EFL Trust to include our Welsh league clubs, has enabled our CCOs, so far, to change the lives of 13,000 people.