An Evaluation of the Pilot Community Sport Programme in Northern Ireland

The long term focus of the pilot Community Sport Programme (CSP) is on improving health and helping those with long term health problems or a disability to have an improved quality of life. It aims to connect with the broader government outcomes of crime reduction and encouraging active citizenship. The establishment of the CSP aimed to begin addressing these key issues and to set targets for increasing sustained participation and building the structures to support this long term objective. This paper reports the findings of a programme of evaluation conducted on the CSP from February 2006 to June 2006. The overall aim of the evaluation was to review the impact of the pilot CSP on individuals, communities and partners. The central theme of this paper is a comparison between ‘what was supposed to happen’ and ‘what did happen’.