Shrewsbury Town have been delivering the Every Player counts project for the last 5 years funded by Wembley National Stadium Trust. In the current funding year we have been working with local SEN college Futures, delivering weekly enrichment football session leading the college to participate in playing fixtures versus other SEN colleges. Since 2019, the enrichment programme has supported over 30 students with over 120 hours of delivery from STitC staff. 

The sessions aim is to provide participants with the opportunity to play football, develop social skills such as team work and communication, and have the opportunity to realise their potential and achieve their goals. The coaches from Shrewsbury Town in the Community design the sessions to improve the skills and fitness of the participants, whilst providing a fun and friendly environment to do so.

Since, attending the sessions at Futures College in 2021 Luke Roberts has participated in the programme, leading him to extend his footballing journey with STitC outside of college and represent Shrewsbury Town in the Shropshire Ability counts football league.

Prior to attending Shrewsbury Town in the Community sessions Luke had the desire to join a team, with ultimate goal of trying to improve his fitness, but hadn’t had any luck in finding one. However, through the sessions at college Luke was able to discover this opportunity.

Luke’s Dad Paul has seen the impact of the session’s highlighting “Training sessions are the highlight of Luke’s week and he embraces team moral, and has developed a sense of belonging in his local community through attending the sessions.”

In addition, Luke has seen a drastic improvement in fitness through attending as he has increased his physical activity by over 4 hours per week, which will mean a 200 hour increase over the course of the year.

College teacher Shaun Roberts has been extremely supportive of the sessions highlighting life changes because of the session. “Our partnership with STitC has really positively effected Luke in a number of ways. His learning, behaviour, motivation and communication skills have all seen a vast improvement over the duration of this year. I am also now able to create football links to learning in academic based lessons which supports with pupil interaction. This is no doubt, a fantastic stepping stone, for all students participating to improve holistically across a wide range of subjects.”