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Education, Children and Young People Committee 18 March 2026 [Draft]

18 Mar 2026 · S6 · Education, Children and Young People Committee

Item of business

Community Sporting Initiatives for Children and Young People

Mark Williams (Denis Law Legacy Trust) Watch on SPTV

Thank you for inviting me to the committee. I am from the Denis Law Legacy Trust, which is a small children’s charity that is based in Aberdeen. We specialise in working in areas of disadvantage across the city, mostly in areas that are in the top 20 per cent of the Scottish index of multiple deprivation.We have three main programmes. I have lots of bits of paper in front of me, but do not worry—I will not read them all; they are just notes to keep me on track. Our main programme is streetsport, which has been running in partnership with Robert Gordon University since 2006, so it is long-established. It has gone from engaging with 3,000 young people a year to engaging with more 30,000 last year. It has quite a large impact given both our organisation’s size and the number of young people that we work with in the city through that one programme.We primarily work with the emergency services, Police Scotland and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service to target areas of youth annoyance. We have had a huge impact on reducing that issue where the streetsport programme operates—by as much as 80 per cent in some of the city’s hardest-hit areas. There is an area in Aberdeen called Torry. Back in 2019, it was number 1 in the city for youth annoyance, accounting for just under 400 calls a year to the police and the fire service. We introduced a Cruyff court in that area, and I am happy to report—we looked at the numbers just last week—that the number of calls has reduced by 80 per cent in that area, and Torry is now 13th in the city for youth annoyance. That is a good example of one of our programmes with Cruyff courts that we deliver in disadvantaged communities that have short, medium and long-term outcomes for the community.The other programme that we run is Club 10—Denis Law’s number was 10. It is based at HMP Grampian and supports families who are affected by imprisonment. We read a horrible statistic on the Barnardo’s website about nine years ago indicating, basically, that if my son sat next to a kid in school whose father or mother was in jail, that kid was three times more likely to go to jail than my son, for no other reason than family connection. We did not think that that was fair, so we wanted to do something about it. We engaged with the prison, and now we deliver family visits there. Because of that programme, those young people now have a solid, good mentor. The young people also come to our streetsport sessions in their community in the city, and they are engaged in volunteering and in our employability programmes and our youth forum. They have much better outcomes, so we are seeing a great impact from that programme.Our last programme is Denis Law’s academy, which is our employability strand. It connects a few other programmes that are around, as well; for example, we use football, but we use multisport as well. The power of sport is huge, not just for mental and physical wellbeing, but in everything else, as I am sure that everyone around this table is well aware. The programme is about connecting to the next steps. A lot of young people drop out of school just because they can. They hit 16 and they want to get away because the curriculum is not working for them. Where do they go? Sometimes they do not go on to positive outcomes. Denis Law’s academy is about working with them to build up their aspirations and motivation to want to do something. The big issue that we sometimes face is that young men cannot be arsed—excuse my language. “I don’t want to do that,” they say, or “I will be doing this, because my dad does this,” or whatever it is. We need to inspire them, and that is what the programme does. It makes them open-minded about moving to the next steps.There are many other things that I could say about the charity; I can provide information after the meeting, if you wish, but that is a snippet. Sorry—once I get going, I get on a soapbox.

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Education, Children and Young People Committee 18 March 2026 [Draft]

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