The potential of sports-based social interventions for vulnerable youth: implications for sport coaches and youth workers

Abstract

Sports have long been viewed as an opportunity to actively engage young people in a leisure context and not just in terms of participation in sports activities, but across a range of issues including education, employment and training, community leadership and healthy lifestyles. Although there are some indications that when working towards broader outcomes with socially vulnerable youth a specific methodology is required, it remains unclear what constitutes this specificity within a sports context. For this, a Flemish (northern region of Belgium) sport project was selected in which data were gathered by means of in-depth and focus group interviews with participants, coaches and key witnesses. The purpose was to gain more insights into how sports are delivered for and experienced by youth who could be considered as socially vulnerable. At the level of coaching, the socio-pedagogical approach and the cultural capital are described as key elements in working towards broader outcomes for socially vulnerable youth. The aim of this study was to develop our understanding of how organised sports, as a series of social relationships and processes, can contribute in making socially vulnerable youth less vulnerable.

Keywords:

• coaching
• pedagogy
• social vulnerability
• sports
• youth

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and Dr Filip Cousseé (Belgium) for their comments on earlier drafts.