Our women’s football fitness session ‘Kick It Off’ was launched in partnership with the City Council supported by the ‘This Girl Can’ campaign.

Launched in 2015, the campaign supports women into getting active in many different ways and we use the relaxed, inclusive environment to encourage women to get fit and feel able to talk about their mental health.

The partnership with CPSL MInd is a vital one for the community Trust, both on a local and a national level.

We will continue to support campaigns set out by the charity and continue to use their expertise to improve our practises when supporting individuals and groups within the community.
Promoting the importance of talking is not only something we do in our work life, we also embed mental health awareness across all programmes, particularly our Mind Your Head sessions in secondary schools.

Hear from our coaches their pledges committing to #doonething to promote the importance of mental health:

Meet Henry. Henry is a year 5 pupil from Bottisham Primary School, and was one of the 3179 local children across 13 of our primary schools that received one of our assemblies from the on the theme Celebrating Diversity.

Using local heroes as role models, our staff inspired children to not only learn more about how diversity can enrich our culture, but also think about ways to promote diversity through the means of writing a poem. Following the assemblies, each child was challenged to write a poem to capture what they had learned and think how they could teach others about diversity.

We had over 600 entries to the competition following the assemblies, which demonstrated the outstanding work that local schools are doing to engage young people in understanding and discussing diversity as a topic, which over time we hope will reduce the discrimination still experienced by so many in our community. Henry’s fantastic poem won the competition and not only did this mean he won tickets to watch a Cambridge United game, his poem was read out at half time and was featured in the match day programme.

On 19th March 2022, our Walking Footballers helped us support the ‘Level Playing Field’ campaign by playing a walking football match on the pitch at a first team game to demonstrate the accessibility of the sport.

This was a special event as it involved not only our seniors, but also a number of our disability participants to highlight the inclusivity of the game. Following this, Walking Football Marathon took place on 2nd May in which our senior participants took part in a 12-hour game to raise money for our disability sport sessions!

Cambridge United and the Community Trust teamed up with PicturePath, who support individuals with additional needs, to introduce a visual visitor guide for supporters with an aim to help reduce anxiety for children and adults with SEN.

This expanded on the work of the Football Clubs in reducing barriers to those with additional needs attending football matches by providing ear defenders, fidget toys and providing audio description. This app improves the users match day experience by helping them to prepare for the game, from travel to turnstiles to view from the stand, which has not only helped individuals with additional needs but also those with anxiety and dementia too.