READING
GUIDE TO: Casey, M.,
Payne, W. and Eime, R.(2009) 'Building the health promotion capacity of
sport
and recreation organisations: A case study of Regional Sports
Assemblies',
Managing Leisure,
14: 2, 112 — 124
[I found out
right at the end that this is an evaluation funded by the State of
Victoria who
also funded the programme. It is very bland and official and this could
be
why?]
This is an
evaluation of an Australian statewide health promotion strategy in nine
regional sports assemblies (RSAs), using a web survey [of policies by
the looks
of things] and interviews with 4 CEOs.The strategy was to address physical inactivity,
through developing a
number of initiatives especially cross sector partnerships.Sport and recreation facilities have a lot of
potential here.Victoria has been
pursuing a number of health sponsorship policies like banning smoking,
and increasing sun
protection.They saw a need to develop
supportive
environments rather just change individuals though.An example of good practice is Sport Canada,
apparently, although it has also become bureaucratised and there are
some
examples of organisations just conforming on paper.What is needed is research on the change
process.One model of change involves
four stages [same old same old], awareness raising, planning,
implementation,
institutionalisation (113).Other change
models have also been considered.What
the team are interested in is the change from an emphasis on
competitive sport
to one based on community based for health promotion.
There are
nine RSAs in Victoria.These are state
funded and act in a similar way to the UK County Sports Partnerships.They offer advice to clubs, promote coaching,
and manage official accreditation.They
have become interested in partnerships to develop health promotion
leading to
an attempt to establish links between sports clubs and other public
organisations.There have been a number
of pilot schemes, and an agreement to target particular groups which
include
various minorities and indigenous women.The idea is to begin with capacity building and then
to move on to
organisational change.Capacity building
involves the development of specific organisations, workforces,
leadership
and partnerships.Organisational change
was conceived as following the four stages above.The
web based survey and the interviews were
conducted over time.The four RSAs were
sampled for various reasons from the nine.They also analysed strategic plans as documents
[claiming this is
triangulation].The interviews, coding
themes and the concepts selected from the text were based on the four
stage
model.
The results
showed:
(A)The
strategic plans do show a change towards
a focusing on participation and health promotion [the themes are
summarised in
a table page 116].Certain performance
indicators have been developed to focus on health promotion [based on
these
early notions of capacity building outlined above].
(B)Referring
to the four stages of change:
(1) awareness was
studied through
interviewers coding interviews and the existence of health promotion
programmes
[all pretty official so far]:
(2) adoption—here
there was some evidence the
new policy was made to fit existing priorities, such as widening access
[not
really commented on any further], policies on change were made more
attractive
by the prospect of additional funding.One CEO marginalised the new promotion policy for a
while, but others
saw it as an important new priority.Some said they lacked information, an important
source of resistance to
change, the authors claim.Some new
relationships were formed with governing boards;
(3) implementation
was made easier through
extended funding.Funders specified five
areas of development, and the RSAs showed positive improvements in all
five
[rather vague staff here, based on official information about new
focuses and
improvement].The areas for development
included building the community profile which was a gap in
provision—for
example there was no systematic monitoring of community needs.There also problems with high staff turnover
without adequate transition arrangements, and no provision for
sustainability
after the specific change funds had dried up;
(4) institutionalisation
[reported through
very dull stuff such as change to representations on the committees of
other
organisations] there were fewer resources, however and no capacity to
fundraise.The table on page 120 reports
these rather
dull results, and we have no details about how they were coded or
analysed.The table contains very vague
and uncritical statements such as reporting the ‘development...of synergies between sport and health—a lot’
The overall claim was that there was
transformation and that some useful partnerships were established, but
that
everything depended on funding from the state of Victoria.Some groups were identified in the analysis
of capacity building, especially the need to contact communities.More research is needed on organisations’
willingness
to change [with the usual management stuff about the need for
leadership].Organisations need to be more
active, and to
pursue open-ended funding [fat chance of that these days] and they need
to
share goals with their partners.The
RSAs were not active enough in this case.It was noted that the new policies did fit some of
their existing goals
anyway [so is this a deliberate change strategy or is it a comment on
ritualism?].Other organisations need to
be compared.Maybe the the point should
not be about
adopting principles alone [welcome to the real world!].
This is an important area showing the need
for support from local states.However,
funders need to understand organisational barriers, including the
crucial need
to contact communities, and to give a proper account of change.
[Overall, very sketchy research, and pretty
well uncritical, as you might expect from funded work.Despite the core to understand organisations’,
there is no real critical perspective deployed here, nothing like
micropolitics,
or even the work on organisations by Houlihan.There are a few hints about ritualism and problems
contacting ‘community’,
but these are old hat.How did this get
published as an academic
article? Oh OK , it's a managment journal]