Good Health & Wellbeing

Good health and wellbeing

Ensuring healthy lives and promoting wellbeing for all at all ages.

We’re passionate about fostering an ethos of inclusivity, and increasing awareness and action around the importance of physical activity together with good mental health and a balanced lifestyle. At the heart is this is our commitment to diversity and creating a safe environment for people from all backgrounds to thrive. This is reflected in our wide range of provisions, community programmes and membership across our two Health and Wellbeing sites. We are something for everyone. This has undoubtedly been exacerbated by the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, it also speaks to a declining, and increasingly concerning trend.

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Research conducted by Sports England suggests that 1 in 4 people across the UK are classed as physically inactive, that is, completing less than 30 minutes of physical activity in a week. Reportedly, this carries an annual cost of £7.4 billion and is associated with 1 in 6 deaths.

As a nation, we are currently 20% less active than we were in the 1960’s, with expectations that it will continue to get worse unless we take radical and decisive action, now."

For Central YMCA this translates into two key activity strands supporting our impact agenda. ‘Increasing Access’ and ‘Improving Quality of Life’

1- Increasing Access

Accessibility to physical activity is as much about increasing physical access to facilities and opportunity as it is in creating the mental stability, emotional security, and participants’ comfort and safety for them to want to do so. To mitigate the risk of continued non-participation we initiated a series of initiatives and projects over the course of the year designed to reach deeper into the community than ever before and increase the all-important power of a focus on a more equal representation.

A snapshot of our members across our two London Health & Wellbeing sites, highlighting the community groups that we support and those less represented that we will seek to do more for in the coming years.

#1 Summer Swim School/Swimming Classes
Open to children aged between 6 months and 14 years.

Summer crash course: Over 4 days during summer holidays

Baby and toddler swimming lessons: Starts September

Parent & Baby swim classes

#2 After School Classes
We delivered Physical Education in 12 schools in and around the local area. We ran afterschool sports for children aged 5+. These included Football, Gymnastics and the hugely popular Basketball with Coach Robin. Over the course of the year, we had 210 children in these sessions.

#3 Holiday Playschemes

A suite of programmes, full of indoor and outdoor activities, specifically designed to tackle the triple inequalities facing our children: holiday hunger, physical inactivity, and social isolation. Supporting an incredible 233 children over 58 days this year with a phenomenal 100% of parental respondents confirming they would bring their child to participate again!

Click here to read more information about the holiday playschemes

#4 Girls MOVE

Last year, Sport England reported that girls from the BAME community are reporting significantly fewer positive attitudes towards sport and physical activity. This is reflected in our own situation in Camden, with research from ProActive Camden highlighting that physical activity drops off significantly for girls when they leave primary school, even more so for girls from a BAME background. Spearheaded by YMCA England and Wales, with ourselves acting as the deliver partner, ‘Girls MOVE’ was set up with a sole focus of getting BAME girls to be more active must be our focus.

Over this 3-week programme the girls embark on a journey to explore their identity, confidence, and self-esteem. There is also an opportunity to get physically active, but not necessarily in a ‘traditional’ way. Instead of focusing on what many do at school, we look to see what else the girls would like to try – from juggling and gymnastics to boxing and salsa. All sessions are delivered in our gym, with a private space for when the group need the privacy for religious reasons. 

Physical activity is an important part of my week that helps boost my confidence and allows me to have fun, no matter how good I am at the activities I try.

In order to measure success, we evaluate against two thematic areas: attitude to physical activity, and improvement in mental wellbeing. This is tracked using before and after surveys which have questions focusing on attitudes to physical activity, and the Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale. Young people self-assess their mental wellbeing prior to taking part in the project, which will give us a baseline, and again at the end of the project. We will also gather feedback to get qualitative impact data.

The mental wellbeing and physical activity scores across both cohorts currently average out at an improvement of 20% and 28.57% respectively.

Everyone deserves the best opportunity to achieve their potential and live a happier and healthier life – and GIRLS Move supports girls from the BAME community to do just that. We are delighted to be seeing young people progress with their physical exercise journey, as well as seeing a marked improvement their mental wellbeing.The M&E showed across the board improvements, in both the Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale questions and the physical activity questionnaires.In each area, all of the metrics resulted in improvements from pre to post, with consistently positive improvements related to physical activity, with having 30% increase across the two cohorts.#5 Free Pilates classes for BAME women
We know that Covid-19 impacted us all in different ways, but for those with already existing inequalities, it further intensified these – leaving those more vulnerable struggling even more. The Race Equality Commission found that BAME communities are 60% more likely to experience depression yet are less likely to access services through primary care. In addition to all this, BAME women in particular are at higher risk of developing diabetes, hypertension and cardiometabolic complications. Partnering with Voluntary Action Camden we launched a free tailored 6-week Pilates programme for BAME women. The 6-week programme ran late August offering a safe space for participants to feel at ease and connect with other women who are looking to get active and improve their health and wellbeing.

#6 Black History Month

We wanted to put a spotlight on Dr Harold Moody, who's blue commemorative plaque can be found outside YMCA Club. He was credited as having been key to the passing of the landmark Race Relations Act in 1965, which prohibited discrimination on the grounds of colour, race, ethnicity or nationality, and created the offence of “incitement to racial hatred”. The plaque is now a permanent reminder that Britain’s first civil rights organisation was born at the Central YMCA Club in a bid to fight racial inequality and injustice.

Read more about Dr Harold Moody's story

Exercise classes in celebration of black history and heritage.

Through a series of classes run through the Club in October we sought to celebrate and recognise black pioneers in sporting history including:

Jack Johnson, the first African-American world heavyweight boxing champion
Jesse Owens, a track and field athlete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games
Chuck Cooper, first African-American player in the National Basketball Association.
Gabby Douglas first African American to become the Olympic individual all-around champion.

#7 Increasing membership value
Through a new partnership with Jubilee Hall Trust, we were able to provide members with an enhanced membership offering enabling access to three additional sites in the local area: Jubilee Hall (Covent Garden), The Armoury Centre (Hampstead Heath) and Colombo Centre (Southwark).

#8 National Practitioners

Through YMCA Fit we trained and qualified 460 new Personal Trainers into the sector across this year. Conservative estimates suggest a Personal Trainer will typically support 15 clients over a 6-month period.If all these beneficiaries were moving from physical inactivity that would carry a total social value of just under £4.5 million!! Beyond that, through our Awards provision, we have validated the training and capability of a further 2,534 Personal Trainers in the UK.

How much physical activity do you do a week, on average?

Less that 30 minutes
30 minutes to 3 hours
Over 3 hours

Over 22.5 million people in UK are considered physically inactive, costing the UK economy on average, £329 per person!

2 - Improving Quality of Life

Central YMCA Club remains as deeply committed to its community as when the doors first opened and has developed extensive provision to prevent pre-existing health conditions deteriorate at the same time as promoting positive mental health and individual well-being and reducing the pressure on GPs and the National Health Service.

Index

Older Adults
Free Clinics & Workshops
Volunteers

#1 Positive Health

The Central YMCA Positive Health Scheme is a medical referral exercise programme devoted to encouraging HIV positive individuals to exercise in a nonclinical setting, set up in 1997 our Positive Health exercise programme is now 27 years old and has helped over 17,000 people.  Our aim is to design a safe and effective exercise programme taking into consideration the various illnesses and conditions experienced with a view to improving not only fitness and self-esteem but also quality of life. The scheme is intended for people who reside or work in London.  We aim to administer and deliver this programme within an excellent framework that can be used as a model of good practice for other centres, as a result Central YMCA Club has become a sanctuary for those living with HIV.Over the last full annual cycle of running (from 1st October 2022 – end September 2023), the Positive Health programme has been supported by 3 full-time members of staff and 17 volunteers and has supported 193 participants, primarily from Camden and Islington but also crossing 15 other London Boroughs.A number of our current volunteers have come through the programme and now volunteer for us across various areas.

Read More

#2 Older Adults

Our Club is home to 940 older adults (growing from 827 at the beginning of the year) who come to us to improve and maintain good health through fitness and friendship.
By offering functional movement classes alongside a range of social events, we are reducing loneliness, improving quality of life and sustaining good mental health.
Over 85% of this group visit the Club more than 3 times a week, with 36% being members for over 10 years.

HIV Testing & STI Screening

Through our relationship with Positive East, an HIV prevention and support organisation in East London, we hosted a series of in-person HIV and STI testing clinics out of the Club. Number of clinics in a year: 3

Nutrition Workshops

Focussed on improving diet for those with no idea where to start. Run by our in-house nutritionist, Rebecca Heather, we launched a series of Nutritional Workshops to help our members and participants sort through the myths around nutrition.

Mindfulness Workshops

A free introduction for participants to learn simple meditation practices to improve overall wellbeing and reduce stress, worries, anxiety and low mood.

Arthritis Clinics

Free sessions to offer practical advice to reduce the pain of arthritis through self-management and lifestyle, in partnership with Arthritis Action. Number of clinics in a year: 4

#4 Specialist interventions

Whilst much of our activity to promote physical activity comes in the form of group exercise and participation we also work with many individuals on a one-to-one basis through specialist clinics and treatments, facilitating 1,281 of these throughout the year across a range of specialisms including massage, cupping and acupuncture.

#5 Volunteers
As at National Volunteer Week in June 2023 we are lucky to have 42 volunteers supporting our studio and gym programme, our older adults and community programmes and our children and young people’s programme.
Our volunteers' knowledge and expertise support us in delivering more programmes and classes to our local communities and for that, as always, we are grateful. Our volunteers truly make the Club a special place for everyone.

“National Volunteers Week is a chance to pause and acknowledge the valuable work that volunteers do every day."

At the time of writing, we are delighted to say that we currently have 63 volunteers across the organisation and fully expect this number to continue to grow and provide invaluable experience to our volunteers and customers.

Thank you to our volunteers for your time and dedication. You make the club a special place to be for everyone.”