statistics & evaluation  

Corporate publicity

Corporate publicity material for local scheme

Coaching Standards 

Coaching standards material for local scheme

 

Met-Track - Latest News

Last Updated 1st July 2010

Ealing Borough Commander puts on his running shoes.

Ealing Borough Commander, Chief Superintendent Sultan Taylor, put on his running shoes and raced to Perivale Athletics Track to present an £8300 cheque to Ealing Met-Track recently. He visited the track to donate the funds that will go a long way toward perpetuating the scheme in the West London borough for the next year and beyond.

The funding comes from a special Prisoner Fund and will cover Met Track's weekly running costs as well as providing financial backing towards putting 22 youngsters on the ?Star Track? scheme designated for those who attend training regularly.

After presenting the cheque, Mr Taylor said: ?I am impressed how well our police officers and police staff worked on this project. I hope that a lot of these young athletes will become role models in the future to make Ealing the safest borough in London.?

Ealing Safer Schools Officer PC McGuigan has been the lynchpin of the local scheme, which was launched over two years ago. It has continued to grow ever since.

He said: It is fantastic to see school children from all over the Borough who might other wise be hanging around on the streets or on their estates getting fit and participating in sport.?

Anyone wishing to participate can just turn up at the squad sessions that run at Perivale Athletics Track every Thursday 4:30-6pm and are completely free. Further information can be obtained from the borough's squad page on this site (click on the map).

MET-TRACK INHERITS 2012 STAMP OF APPROVAL

Met-Track has received a huge boost after London 2012 endorsed the scheme by awarding them their prestigious 'Inspire Mark'. It recognises Met-Track's innovative style in bringing new opportunities to young Londoners in the spirit of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, using London's hosting of the biggest show on earth as a source of inspiration for young people to engage in sport.

The adoption of the Inspire logo will gradually infiltrate all of Met-Track's marketing material and will appear on this website, which itself will undergo a major refit over coming weeks. It all combines to put Met-Track at the forefront of the many youth sports schemes emerging around the Capital.

In return Met-Track will promote at every opportunity the long established ideals of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. London 2012's Get Set programme for young people to be inspired by the Games shares many of the values held within the Met-Track environment, among which are:

  • Developing communication skills and social understanding;
  • Helping young people eat well, get active, and feel good;
  • Inspiring more young people to get involved in sport;
  • Inspiring young people to take practical learning pathways.

 

Met-Track Scheme Director, John Powell said: "This is a ringing endorsement of all that we are about in Met-Track, and I am delighted that we have succeeded in acquiring this mark. It will perpetuate the synergy we already had with the whole London 2012 deal in getting young people into healthy lifestyles through sport. We will display the mark on all our material as the new versions are published with a great deal of pride."

  MET-TRACK.com

Met-Track Championships

Met-Track, now one of London's leading sports diversion projects, moved up a gear in East London last week as Waltham Forest hosted the very first Met-Track 'Championships' on Friday 19th March.

The event was held at Walthamstow Pool & Track with representitives from three of the scheme's 22 boroughs - Waltham Forest , Hackney and Newham. Over sixty young people aged between 10 and 17 contested various track events despite the rain, and the whole venture was heralded a huge success.

Met-Track has thus-far only delivered coaching to young people with a view to offering sport in the form of athletics or fitness training as a healthy and fun alternative to crime and anti social behaviour, showing how excellence can be achieved by endeavour. The move in Waltham Forest to a competitive element proved immensely popular, and is now likely to be offered as best practice to other borough schemes around the Capital.

Recently crowned World Indoor 60 metre Champion, Dwain Chambers, was a high profile guest at the event, and he signed autographs and posed for photographs with the athletes. He congratulated 16-year-old Rohan Dolphi on winning the 100 metre sprint in 11.5 seconds. Rohan, who attends Frederick Bremer School in Walthamstow, said: " I have been coming to Met-Track for the past two years. I try to come at least once at week. I really enjoy it and PC Loraine Verghese, the local organiser, has really inspired me".

Superintendent John Powell, Met-Track's Scheme Director and founder, also attended and was delighted with the turn-out and commitment of those involved. "There has been great support from our partners to get this event organised," he said. "Waltham Forest Met-Track is a shining example of good work and a huge credit to those involved.

"I hope this will be the first of many Met-Track competitions. Although we aren't about levels of achievement, and more about encouraging engagement and endeavour, the fun atmosphere and sense of achievement by just about everyone who took part at Walthamstow achieves just that sort of positivity we are looking to dervelop in young lives that might otherwise head in the wrong direction."

Feedback from staff, who had come from all over London, was exceptionally positive. PCSO Mel McClure had travelled all the way from Hammersmith to help. Having heard how strong the scheme is in Waltham Forest, she wanted to experience it first hand and take back best practice to help her borough launch their own project later this year.

LONDON SCHOOLS TO LEARN A LESSON FROM MET-TRACK!

Met-Track is to expand its Schools and Communities Involvement Programme ('SCIP') into seven more boroughs. Initial pilots in Bromley at Kelsey Park School, Beckenham, and Charles Darwin, Biggin Hill, have proved very popular, and so the scheme is to extend.

The scheme will see lead agency, the British Athletic Charitable Trust (BACT), parachute International athletes into London schools in nominated boroughs to deliver sports coaching to young people assessed as most likely to benefit. All the current opportunities and pathways that Met-Track has to offer remain available for young people engaging with this segment of the project, as well as the core sessions at tracks all over the Capital.

Scheme Director, John Powell explained: "There is a very real danger of our young who have little or nothing to colour in their lives, will be attracted to the wrong kind of activity that fuels the negative headlines you read so often these days. By intervening early with vulnerable communities and individuals, we can prevent this happening."

Met-Track's approach will be intelligence-led, using every available source to identify those groups of young people most likely to benefit. Sessions will be held in schools based in seven boroughs, although they won't necessarily be closed to pupils from other schools in the area.

"It's a great opportunity for Met-Track to diversify and expand, whilst also playing a vital role in making London a safer place in which to live and work, and ensuring potentially vulnerable communities are offered exciting opportunities to create a positive future," said John.

This expansion of 'SCIP' follows the immensely successful launch of the two schemes in Bromley. Some other boroughs are also looking to follow suit, especially with isolated track venues providing a less than welcoming prospect for young people during winter months.

The boroughs earmarked to benefit from the initial roll-out of the 'SCIP' programme now are Brent, Hackney, Haringey, Lewisham, Newham, Tower Hamlets, and Waltham Forest.

Arctic weather

Met-Track has joined the ever-broadening area of business that is falling victim to the Arctic weather sweeping across the south east, and all squad sessions at outdoor venues have been abandoned for this week (ending Friday 8th Jan).

A review will be undertaken on Monday morning 11th, and decisions will be made as to whether training recommences at venues from next week, although this will of course be driven by prevailing conditions and short-term weather forecasts.

Scheme Director John Powell said: "We are experiencing an exceptional winter, and even Met-Track would not expect young people to don track suits and turn out in blizzards! Quite apart from anything else, there is a safety issue to consider first and foremost".

"We hope that things will recommence next week, but we shall have to see. This only goes to highlight the importance of driving forward our plans to create alternative indoor venues in boroughs for situations like this. School-based training is the obvious answer, and we are actively looking to develop a back-up plan in place for as many boroughs as possible."

met-track.com  

MET-TRACK has announced an ambitious new programme for 2010

Scheme Director John Powell has announced an ambitious new programme for 2010, which could see Met-Track touch the lives of hundreds more young Londoners, but it is wholly dependant on realising funding to support it.

'SCIP' - a new Met-Track Schools & Communities Involvement Programme - has been tailored to parachute into some of London's most challenging boroughs, and engage young people in sport and all the other activities the scheme traditionally offers.

"This is a really exciting programme," said John, " which will involve our coaches setting up academies in schools, and targeting the most vulnerable individuals and communities. Going direct into schools has already been seen to be highly effective in some boroughs, but we have not had a budget to sustain it. SCIP is an ambitious but inexpensive programme that could produce some invaluable benefits to Londoners."

Implementation of the programme will necessitate training further international level athletes as coaches, as delivery of the scheme will be performance-based. "Coaches will be expected to make a real difference with the young people they work with," explained John, "and there will be some healthy competition introduced to ensure they do deliver against our objectives, or someone else will be given the opportunity!"

The likely boroughs to first benefit from the scheme have not yet been announced, but the entire programme is dependant on funding being found from an independent source.

"We hope the very clear benefits from this scheme will attract funding in the near future," said John, "but until it does, the proposal remains just that. Anyone interested in finding out more is encouraged to contact me direct or Scheme Manager Jason Hussain."

Contact details: john.powell2@met.police.uk or jason.hussain@met.police.uk

Met-Track has scored another 'first'

Met-Track has scored another 'first' by teaming up with an innovative project in Bexley called 'U-Turn1'.  Run as a pilot scheme for a potentially far more diverse programme in the future, this consisted of a week's activities designed to impact positively on 14 young people's lives.

Apart from the sport element, which saw Met-Track coaches giving one-on-one tuition in various disciplines at Erith Leisure Centre, there was input from a number of partners with a common theme of knife crime awareness running through the week.

Met-Track  

"There were some really valuable sessions delivered by local professionals," explained Met-Track Scheme Director John Powell. "They included a talk from former Chelsea star Paul Elliott who related his life experience s and how easily he could have gone the wrong way in younger years, and a serving prisoner released on licence for the event to depict the realities behind bars.

"This whole concept holds so much potential.  The young people - hand picked as most likely to benefit from the week - were also confronted with the reality of actions having 'consequences', and took part in several team-building exercises."

Met-Track

Met-Track coaches included British Olympic sprinter and World Cup gold medalist Dwayne Grant, European gold medalist James Ellington, and former British Junior international Jason Hussain, also there in his role as the Met-Track Scheme Manager.

"This echoed many of the principles of what we saw in Los Angeles last year when we visited the LAPD Juvenile Impact Programme," explained John, and that was formidably successful.  There is alot of fine-tuning needed to have U-Turn1 achieve what they did, but the basic concept is there.

A debrief forum with everyone involved has been held since the week concluded, and John has offered the LA concept as a way of moving forward.

"We and everyone involved realise that no one life can be turned around in the space of five days, but the foundations have been laid for an incredibly positive initiative that could potentially offer some challenged young lives given another chance, and that can't be a bad idea."

Met-Track

Previous News Items - Requires Microsoft Word