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Sociology of Sport
International Review for the
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DOI: 10.1177/1012690212448002
published online 12 June 2012International Review for the Sociology of Sport
Reinhard Haudenhuyse, Marc Theeboom and Zeno Nols
well-defined interventions with easy-tofollow outcomes?
Sports-based interventions for socially vulnerable youth: Towards
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Sports-based interventions
for socially vulnerable
youth: Towards well-defined
interventions with easy-to-
follow outcomes?
Reinhard Haudenhuyse
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Marc Theeboom
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Zeno Nols
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Abstract
In this paper, we critically examine the burgeoning scientific discourse about sports-based
interventions for socially vulnerable or disadvantaged youth from a socio-pedagogical perspective.
It is argued that the call for more well-defined sports-based social interventions with easier-to-
follow outcomes may be at odds with the open-ended philosophy that is viewed as a fundamental
principle when engaging with socially vulnerable youth in a leisure context (Smith, 2003), and
could potentially undermine the effectiveness and value of such practices for young people.
We examine the question if supporting young people in social vulnerable situations will be
best served with well-defined sports-based interventions with easy-to-follow outcomes. We
argue that if outcomes are to be formulated or analysed, such outcomes need to go beyond
narrow conceptions of individual development, and need to be defined in consultation with
young people. Adopting a socio-pedagogical perspective, we have proposed an alternative way
to define (and evaluate) outcomes, in consultation with young people, in terms of biographical,
institutional and political competences. Furthermore, it is argued that there is an acute need for
re-socialising sports research regarding social interventions for socially vulnerable groups, and
in particular youth.
Corresponding author:
Reinhard Haudenhuyse, Department of Sport Policy and Management, Vrije Universiteit Brussel,
Brussel 1050, Belgium.
Email: reinhard.haudenhuyse@vub.ac.be
448002
IRS
Article
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2 International Review for the Sociology of Sport 0(0)
Keywords
evaluation, research, social pedagogy, sports, vulnerable youth
Introduction
The concept of social vulnerability broadly refers to the distorted relations of young
people with institutions of society, such as family, school, labour market, healthcare
and justice (Vettenburg, 1998). Central within the concept is the progressive accumula-
tion of negative experiences with such institutions, which eventually amount into
social disconnectedness. Stigmatisation, discrimination, sanctioning and the self-
perception of incompetence due to low ambitions and lack of achieved ‘success’, are
often the net results for youth with a higher degree of social vulnerability (Vettenburg,
1998). In light of the concept of social vulnerability, sports-based interventions are
viewed as a way to alleviate the distorted relationships of youth, and the outcomes they
produce (Haudenhuyse et al., 2012).
A vast amount of literature can be found reporting on the association of organised
youth sports with a range of positive health-related, educational and social outcomes (see
Coalter, 2005; Fraser-Thomas et al., 2005; Gould and Carson, 2008; Holt, 2008).
Specifically, in relation to socially vulnerable youth, sports are 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. For example, in a British cohort
study, Feinstein et al. (2005) found that for vulnerable groups, sports club attendance at
age 16 reduced the chances of social exclusion outcomes during adulthood (age 30). In
addition, it has been argued that wider benefits accruing from organised sports involve-
ment are stronger for disadvantaged youth with social, academic deficits and families
residing in high-risk neighbourhoods (Feinstein et al., 2005; Mahoney et al., 2005). Such
instrumental views on sports are, however, not new, as there is long history of viewing
sports, as part of a physical education curriculum, to achieve a variety of outcomes relat-
ing to the individual or the wider community (Bailey et al., 2009). What is more, sports
are increasingly being used by a variety of organisations and services that are not tradi-
tionally linked to providing sport activities, such as youth work organisations, commu-
nity and welfare services (Theeboom et al., 2010). The main reason why such
organisations and services have started to use sports from a social and developmental
perspective – often with regard to specific target groups – might be related to the fact that
sports attract many young people. For example, sports participation data from Flanders
have shown that almost three out of four youngsters between the ages of 10 and 17 are
involved in at least one sport (Scheerder et al., 2011). These figures illustrate that sport
is a highly accessible activity that allows large numbers of youngsters to become
involved. Moreover, it has been indicated that in comparison to other socio-cultural prac-
tices (for example, youth movements, youth centres, youth out-reach practices), sports-
based practices seem to be more capable in attracting young people independently of
their socio-economic background (Feinstein et al., 2005; Vanhoutte, 2007) and seem to
provide rich contexts for reaching so-called harder-to-reach youth (Crabbé, 2007;
Feinstein et al., 2007; Spaaij, 2009). In other words, sport presents a very powerful tool
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Haudenhuyse et al. 3
for engaging socially vulnerable young people in an organised context, which offers an
opportunity to work with them. Reaching socially vulnerable young people constitutes
the first necessary step for working with them towards broader developmental and social
outcomes. Evidently, this first step is, however, not sufficient for creating positive health-
related, educational or social outcomes. From a more general perspective and related to
working with young people in a sports setting towards positive youth developmental
outcomes, Coakley (2011: 310) stated that sport participation must occur in settings
where young people are physically safe, personally valued, morally and economically
supported, personally and politically empowered and hopeful about the future.
Intellectual clarity
Coalter (2011) has argued that sports-based social interventions are mostly guided by
inflated promises and lack of conceptual clarity. It is often not clear why it is assumed
that participation in particular sports programmes can have certain impacts on people
participating in them (Coalter, 2011). In this context, sports-based social interventions
have been described as ill-defined interventions with hard-to-follow outcomes (Coalter,
2007 with reference to Pawson, 2003), relating to the fact that the added value of such
sports programmes is often formulated in imprecise terms, which reduces the ability to
evaluate the effectiveness of these programmes. In relation to youth programmes in
general, it has been argued that existing evaluation practices have done little to differ-
entiate what processes or experiences within youth-based activities are related to posi-
tive changes (Hansen et al., 2003). This has lead researchers to refer to such practices
as black or magical boxes (see Coalter, 2007), since little is known about the ways
programmes are actually working in relation to their claimed but often hard-to-follow
(sometimes magical) outcomes.
There seems to be a growing body of literature in the domain of sports research,
underlining the view that sports-based social practices need to be more clearly conceptu-
alised in terms of inputs (the used human, social, physical, cultural, political, economical
resources), throughputs (what is being done with used resources and how it is done),
outputs (what is being accomplished with used resources) and outcomes (to what con-
crete consequences have such accomplishments led for those involved) (see Coalter,
2007; Nichols, 2007; Tacon, 2007). It is believed that this will contribute in creating
better and more effective sports-based interventions for, amongst others, socially vulner-
able youth.
Practical wisdom
In relation to sports-based social interventions, the call for more well-defined interven-
tions with easier-to-follow outcomes may, however, be at odds with the open-ended
philosophy that is viewed as a fundamental principle when engaging with socially
vulnerable youth in a leisure context (Smith, 2003).
In their evaluation of several international sport-for-development programmes,
Coalter and Taylor (2009) reported that sports programmes that adopted an open-ended
street/youth worker approach tended to be more effective in terms of creating an added
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4 International Review for the Sociology of Sport 0(0)
value through sports practices. They suggested that such programmes allow more in-depth,
intensive and extensive social relationships. In a similar vein, researching a post-disaster
sports-based intervention for youth in Iran (i.e., Sport and Play for traumatised children
& youth), Kunz (2009) argued that the supportive environment created by the coaches
played a crucial role in facilitating rehabilitative psychosocial outcomes, whereas Kay
(2009) stated that the open and reflexive relationships formed between staff and partici-
pants within the context of a sport-for-development programme in India (i.e., GOAL),
underpinned the success of the programme in terms of creating feelings of empowerment
amongst female participants living in impoverished neighbourhoods. Regarding youth
work practices in general, Smith (2003) argued that the relational aspect constitutes the
cornerstone of youth work, and specifically youth work practices targeted at socially
vulnerable youth. Based on extensive qualitative research done in an after-school
setting (more specifically an urban Boys & Girls drop-in club), Jones and Deutsch
(2010) have identified three strategies that staff used to develop relationships with youth,
namely minimising relational distance, active inclusion and attention to proximal rela-
tional ties. According to the researchers, such relational strategies served as the founda-
tion, for both youth engagement in the programme and the promotion of positive
developmental outcomes (Jones and Deutsch, 2010).
In the domain of sports and physical education, the Teaching Personal and Social
Responsibility (TPSR) model, as propagated by Hellison (1995, 2003), is equally based
on strong instructor–participant relationships. The TPSR model, developed within the
context of sports programmes working with inner-city socially vulnerable youth, is
said to provide a set of values (for example, responsibility for others, leadership), and
strategies to work towards such values (for example, reflection time, leadership oppor-
tunities) that could be fostered through sports-based practices for youth (Martinek and
Hellison, 2009). The model has been used, researched and positively evaluated in sev-
eral educational (Wright and Burton, 2008; Wright et al., 2010) and leisure settings
(Hellison and Walsh, 2002). As such, it might provide a practice-based framework for
nurturing relationships with young people in sports-based social interventions.
From their experiences of working for more than 50 years with socially vulnerable
youth in sports-based settings, Martinek and Hellison (2009: 138) have stated the fol-
lowing regarding the TPSR model and the assessment of outcomes: ‘ […] we have
found that assessment of certain aspects of our […] programs can be a messy business
and does not always lead to “tangible” outcomes’. This seems to create a potential ten-
sion field. On the one hand, we need clear and well-defined interventions with easier-to-
follow outcomes, and on the other hand, there is the recognition that any set of outcomes
is hard to make tangible. Some authors (Crabbé, 2006; Haudenhuyse et al., 2012) have
even stated that when sports are part of a personal and social development programme,
there are no fixed outcomes to be pursued, and this is due to the variety of contexts in
which programmes operate and the ever-changing challenges and needs that young peo-
ple face in such contexts. What is more, research in Flanders (Coussée and Roets, 2011)
and the UK (Tiffany, 2011) has illustrated how youth programmes pursuing fixed exter-
nally defined outcomes potentially have the perverse effect of excluding those who dif-
fer most from a desired developmental trajectory or programme endpoint. This is
especially relevant if such a trajectory or endpoint is conceptualised based on
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Haudenhuyse et al. 5
mainstream conventions and practices regarding education, employment or positive
youth development, conventions and practices that are perpetuated by the same institu-
tions (for example, schools and career services) that make young people vulnerable in
the first place. Based on a socio-historical analysis of youth work practices and dis-
courses in Flanders, Van de Walle et al. (2010) have argued that the somewhat techno-
cratic call to bring more structure into youth work practices (see Feinstein et al., 2005;
Mahoney and Stattin, 2000), which would imply better structuring, defining and demar-
cating sports-based social interventions based on clearly pre-conceptualised outcomes,
fails to acknowledge the complexities of social life, and might also even reinforce pro-
cesses of social exclusion. In this context, Tiffanny and Pring (2008) have argued that
the most marginalised young people are less likely to participate in highly structured and
pre-described leisure activities. Perhaps this can be best illustrated in the domain of
sports. It is an open secret that sports practices pursuing fixed and externally defined
sports developmental or competitive outcomes will exclude young people, who might
have other personal goals and needs in terms of sports participation and leisure time
spending. In relation to young people in vulnerable situations, it has been suggested that
certain young people reject organised, competitive mainstream sports, because such set-
tings contain components similar to those that they have already failed to resolve (for
example, adherence to formal rules, achievement of externally defined goals and testing
situations in formal educational settings) (Andrews and Andrews, 2003; Sugden and
Yiannakis, 1982). Related to youth sports and working towards broader outcomes, the
importance of starting from young people, and not externally defined outcomes, has
been formulated by Armour (2011) as follows:
If there is an underpinning belief that engagement in appropriate sport activities can be a
‘good’ thing for […] young people, offering a range of sport specific and personal, educational,
social and health benefits, then the principle of understanding and addressing individual need
[…] is non-negotiable. (p.21)
The strength of effective sports-based, and other social interventions, may lie in the
fact that such practices provide young people with experiences and safe supportive envi-
ronments that are perhaps less likely to be provided by schools, family milieu or other
(sports) contexts (Raes, 2011). Through this, sports-based social interventions may offer
contexts in which young people could acquire competences to give meaning to their lives
and help them cope with and change difficult situations (Coussée and Roets, 2011). In
this context, Theeboom (2007) has questioned the need to attribute policy-led and top-
down defined wider social roles to sports.
The question can be asked if sports indeed need to fulfil all of these expectations and should
rather be viewed as an accessible activity which attracts a lot of young people and by doing so
offers the opportunity for teachers, sports coaches, educators, youth workers…to work in an
open-ended environment with a wide variety of specific groups in a positive manner. (p.51)
Hence, aligning sports-based social interventions in conformation with formal educa-
tion or employment – containing social conventions that are the sources of exclusionary
processes – or even conventional sports development, could potentially undermine the
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6 International Review for the Sociology of Sport 0(0)
effectiveness and value of such practices, with the end result that young people are not
reached anymore, or that such practices will fail to provide meaningful contexts for
socially vulnerable young people.
Limitations of evidence-based sports policies and
practices
Despite the strong call for more evidence-based practice and policy, propagators of the
evaluation literature are not optimistic about the feasibility of putting their principles
in practice. Weiss (1997: 73), for example, argued that ‘it is almost impossible to
develop a plausible set of nested theoretical assumptions about how programs are
expected to work’, whereas Pawson (2003: 486) stated that we can never really say
what a programme is. Although the call for more realism, conceptual clarity and intel-
lectual coherence is imperative, it is questionable if this will only be best served with
better-articulated and predetermined programme outcomes in relation to working with
socially vulnerable youth. If a more systematic and logical rationale is used as a frame-
work, it should be made clear to what extent programmes are designed and delivered
on the basis of believable theories of the complex causes of social vulnerability that
such programmes seek to address (Rossi et al., 2004). If not, then it is highly likely that
programmes or policy measures will be ineffective and even irrelevant in addressing
such issues (Coalter, 2011). In addition, it needs be examined if sports-based interven-
tions have been implemented as intended, but also if such interventions have lead to the
expected results, for whom and why. Fundamentally, evaluating any intervention needs
to encompass the dynamic interplay among values of participants and practitioners, the
goals of the intervention and the broader external forces impacting the delivery of the
activities (for example, school, neighbourhood, family). This is what Coalter (2010:
311), with reference to Pawson (2003), has formulated as understanding the social
processes and mechanisms that might lead to desired outcomes for some participants
or some organisations in certain circumstances. More importantly, the answers that
such questions generate will need to add to the overall improvement of sports-based
interventions in terms of design, organisational capacity and implementation (Burnett,
2001; Coalter, 2010).
The expressed need for more emphasis on effectiveness further runs the danger of
creating the conception that processes of social vulnerability can be narrowed down
into well-defined programme outcomes. In such a conception, complex processes are
reduced to easily identified packages of social competencies or life skills (however
defined) that are believed to be taught or caught in order to better align vulnerable
young people to the requirements of the educational system, the labour market and
society at large (Smith, 2003). Such a notion fails to recognise the structures and social
arrangements that make young people socially vulnerable in the first place, and has the
potential outcome of systematically reproducing young people as target groups (Weiss,
1997). Based on her analysis of four Positive Futures sports projects in the UK, Kelly
(2011) has argued that sports-based practices failing to incorporate wider structural
dimensions risk legitimating a reductive analysis of complex processes by highlighting
individual deficits and de-emphasising structural inequalities.
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Haudenhuyse et al. 7
In this context, it may be useful to mention what Münchmeier (1991) has referred to
as installing biographic, institutional and political competences as a task of youth initia-
tives, such as sports-based social interventions. Biographic competence refers to the way
coaches, or those working with young people in a sports setting, could give opportunities
to young people to find out about who they are (for example, identity development, self-
worth). Institutional competence encompasses supporting young people in finding access
and making use of social institutions and services (for example, school, career services,
sport clubs). Finally, political competence entails supporting young people in sharing
ideas with others and having an impact on how policy makers shape the conditions in
which they live, including access to institutional resources (see Coussée and Roets,
2011). This would include, amongst others, identifying and challenging processes of
social exclusion.
Defined outcomes could be measured or indicators could be developed based on
Münchmeier’s competences.
Socialising youth sports research
By no means are we arguing that outcomes, and the assumptions underlying the ways
outcomes are supposed to be reached, should not be explicated, evaluated and
researched. It remains important to analyse outcomes, but such measured outcomes
need to be understood from the perspectives and the experiences of young people par-
taking in sports-based contexts. Analysing outcomes without taking into account the
experiences and contexts in which such outcomes are facilitated, will create limited
insights in how sports could potentially generate an added social value for youth, and
in particular socially vulnerable youth. According to Coakley (2011), this would also
need to include studying how young people learn about factors that negatively affect
their lives and receive guidance in making informed decisions about participating in
collective efforts to confront and change those factors. Such insights can provide prac-
titioners and policymakers a better, more theory-based and fundamental understanding
of how youth sport participation in general, and also specifically in relation to socially
vulnerable groups, is related to various forms of social inclusion, current and future
civic engagement and involvement in social and community development (Coakley,
2011).
Studying how sports-based social interventions are related to, for example, forms of
civic engagement and involvement in community development, should not be restricted
to socially vulnerable or disadvantaged young people. Restricting a focus on young
people in vulnerable and disadvantaged situations runs the danger of creating a climate
of blame, resulting in scape-goating the supposed beneficiaries, as well as practitioners
and services implementing policies and interventions (Colley and Hodkinson, 2001).
Problematically, to date, there is, to our knowledge, no available sociological research
or even existing (researchable) sports-based interventions targeting advantaged young
people, with the aim to integrate them better in society by instigating, for example,
forms of civic engagement. Coakley (2011) has further noted that sociological research
regarding youth sports is sorely lacking. Only recently, a few researchers have started
to critically examine concepts such as, for example, positive youth development in
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8 International Review for the Sociology of Sport 0(0)
sports from a broader socio-pedagogical perspective (see Coakley, 2011; Hartmann and
Kwauk, 2011; Kelly, 2011).
Scrutinising positive youth development through sports
So, if outcomes are to be formulated or analysed, such outcomes need to go beyond
narrow conceptions of individual development, and need to be defined in consultation
with young people. In this respect, outcomes conceptualised from a premeditated posi-
tive youth developmental or at-risk (preventive) rationale will not provide the suffi-
cient conditions under which sport can truly play a wider social role for socially
vulnerable youth. Nor will they deepen our understanding about the potential value of
sports-based social intervention for young people. According to Burnett (2001), an
over-concentration on individual outcomes hinders a more contextualised understand-
ing of the potential social impact that sports-based social interventions could have on
the lives of socially vulnerable groups. An individual developmental rationale, such as
the positive youth development movement, looks, for example, at the behavioural or
attitudinal outcomes of youth engaged in a given sport context, without concomitant
attention to the broader structures in which young people live. An inherent danger of
such an approach is what Coalter (2010) referred to as a displacement-of-scope, by
which potential micro-level individual outcomes are confused with broader macro-
level impacts.
In a similar vein, France (2000) has warned that relying upon psychological theoris-
ing and models of social development, such as, for example, positive youth develop-
ment, creates a narrow focus on what is a complex set of relationships and lives. Although
the positive youth development movement seems to have shifted away from an individu-
alist model to an ecological model that addresses the environmental contexts of youth
development (see Benson, 2002; Eccles and Gootman, 2002), according to Sukarieh and
Tannock (2011), these contexts seldom include broad social, economic and political
issues, and pertain to circumscribed micro-contexts of school, family and local commu-
nity. In this respect, the earlier mentioned TSRP model might also be criticised for not
going beyond such micro-contexts.
Coakley (2011: 313) argued that positive development in sports programmes would
also need to be defined in terms of the need for social justice, rebuilding strong commu-
nity-based social institutions, re-establishing the resource base of the communities
where young people live or empowering young people to be effective agents of social
change in their communities. As such, sports-based social interventions would need to
be evaluated on how such practices relate to a striving for more equality and social
justice in society (Van de Walle et al., 2010). This is not to imply that sports-based
social interventions should not aim at supporting young people in their personal devel-
opment. Sports could play a role for (all) young people who struggle with specific
problems or issues that are mainly related to their own person (for example, lack of
self-assertiveness, social anxieties, depression, aggression, unhealthy high or low lev-
els of self-esteem). The strength of the positive youth development movement lies in its
empowering potential for young people from a broader contextual and asset-based
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Haudenhuyse et al. 9
perspective (see Holt, 2008). However, this empowering potential has been criticised
for not being able to effectively go beyond the individual level, and has as such been
referred to as narrow empowerment (Haudenhuyse et al., 2012; Lawson, 2005). Even
though there is an emerging body of evidence, it has been indicated that, to date,
research examining how to promote positive youth development through sports remains
in its infancy (Holt, 2011).
The point to be made is that an individual-based developmental approach in which
the endpoint is defined based on abstract notions of, for example, pro-social behaviour,
should not be the starting point or the rationale of sports-based social interventions
working with socially vulnerable young people. Vulnerable young people do not face
abstract challenges; they rather face concrete challenges that require interventions that
are based on a thorough analysis of such concrete social challenges. This could be done
by focusing on young people’s narratives and interpretations in relation to their pasts,
presents and futures (Foster and Spencer, 2011), which would allow a deepening of our
understanding of sports-based social interventions targeted at youth. More importantly,
according to Foster and Spencer (2011), a focus on young people’s narratives has the
potential to improve the actual life circumstances of youth and, in particular, socially
vulnerable youth. Again, in such an analysis Münchmeier’s (1991) notion of bio-
graphic, institutional and political competences might prove to be a useful framework
for understanding the narratives of socially vulnerable young people in relation to
forms of sports participation. It could be investigated how, from the perspectives of
young people partaking in sports-based interventions, participation in such settings
contributed in creating pathways to biographical, institutional and political compe-
tences. In such an investigation, it would also be important to include the perspectives
of primary caregivers, significant others and those directly working with young people
in sports-based settings. Furthermore, comparing the potential of sports-based social
interventions in establishing biographical, institutional and political competences with
other forms of social interventions (for example, youth club) in which (the same)
young people partake, might give us more insights into the uniqueness of sports-based
practices.
In order to ascertain the social impact of two sport-for-development programmes in
the Republic of South Africa, Burnett (2001) developed a context-sensitive research
instrument, namely the Sport Development Impact Assessment Tool (SDIAT). The com-
petences, as identified by Münchmeier (1991), show some similarities with the different
impact dimensions of the SDIAT, which encompasses the following:
• macro-level: sport development in relation to broader socioeconomic and envi-
ronmental factors (for example, provision or lack of public facilities and
services);
• meso-level: community development and usage of institutional resources (for
example, involvement in and functioning of social networks, such as sports club
membership);
• micro-level: holistic development of participants in terms of personal experiences
(for example, ideological, physical, social, psychological).
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10 International Review for the Sociology of Sport 0(0)
Within the study of Burnett (2001), the macro-level impact dimension only related to
sports development, and more specifically to the provision of school and public facili-
ties, employment of qualified teachers and in-service training courses, whereas
Münchmeier’s (1991) notion of political competence entails a broader scope. The meso-
level impact dimension, with its focus on the functioning of community networks and the
access to institutional resources that such networks facilitate, roughly overlaps with the
notion of institutional competence. Related to understanding the impact on the holistic
development of participants, Burnett (2001: 45) stated that ‘one has to establish how
people interpret and give meaning to their lives within their social worlds’. As such, this
micro-level impact dimension resembles the biographic competence. The SDIAT model,
and in particular the participatory research strategies and methods that have been used in
the research of Burnett (2001: 48), might provide a good framework of analysis that
would allow researching Münchmeier’s competences within the context of sports-based
social interventions. Such an evaluative framework could provide a possible solution for
the seemingly uneasy position between, on the one hand, more effective and context-
realistic sports-based social interventions and, on the other hand, more valuable and
intellectually sound evaluation practices.
The (real) social value of sports?
The social value of sports-based social interventions cannot be restricted to their poten-
tial to get young people adjusted to societal norms and institutional requirements.
Hartmann and Kwauk (2011) have challenged the dominant vision of using sports as a
means for socialising youth into the existing order (including hegemonic conceptions
of positive youth development), and by doing so reproducing relationships of inequality
and reinforcing processes of social vulnerability. Influenced by the work of Freire
(2008), the authors propose an alternative more radical vision, where sports practices
are conceptualised as a form of political engagement and educative practice that could
contribute to more fundamental social changes (Hartmann and Kwauk, 2011: 298).
Available research, however, indicates that sports-based social interventions seem to
have a limited potential regarding such issues of social change. For example, in his
analysis of the Sport Steward Program (Netherlands), a sports-based intervention that
aims at improving the social outlook and employability prospects of long-term unem-
ployed and underemployed youth, Spaaij (2009: 262) argued that in many cases the
programme failed to break through the system of social reproduction.
According to Van de Walle et al. (2010: 10), any form of youth work, including
sports-based social interventions, should not be seen as a versatile instrument for social
inclusion or integration of socially vulnerable young people, but needs to be under-
stood as part of social life, and therefore inevitably a co-carrier of processes of, for
example, social vulnerability. This understanding means a socio-pedagogical shift
from the attention for individual well-defined outcomes, towards assuring social rights
and equal access to socio-economical provisions for young people through sports-
based social interventions. In addition, outcomes should not be restricted to socio-
cultural factors such as improving social bonding with family, friends and caregivers,
reducing anti-social or risky behaviours and changing (often improving) attitudes
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Haudenhuyse et al. 11
towards education and employment. A focus on attitudes, values and behaviours is,
according to Colley and Hodkinson (2001), the hallmark of discourses that place a
moral interpretation upon forms of social exclusion, and pathologises those considered
to be socially vulnerable. If sports-based social interventions truly aim at improving
lives of young people, their focus should also be targeted at structural factors regarding
access to socio-economical resources, such as family income, education and employ-
ment, housing quality and neighbourhood status. By reading the previous sentence, one
might immediately feel the inherent difficulty (perhaps improbability) of changing, for
example, the housing quality or family income, through mere sports participation.
However, as Spaaij (2009) argued, ‘[…] sport, as a relatively autonomous field, cannot
be viewed in isolation from other social spheres, such as the family, education, labour
market and government’ (p.262). Taking into account both socio-structural and socio-
cultural factors related to processes of social vulnerability, we might become more
modest and realistic about the potential of sports-based social interventions, to con-
front such complex processes.
Youth-defined interventions, with well-evaluated outcomes
In summary, the caveat that needs to be formulated is that well-defined interventions
should not constitute pre-defined interventions. An open-ended approach that works
towards externally pre-defined outcomes is, by definition, not an open-ended approach,
and will fail to provide the necessary conditions that are required for reaching and mean-
ingfully working with socially vulnerable young people. Such an open-ended coaching/
guidance approach was described by Haudenhuyse et al. (2012) as a coaching attitude
that puts young people’s well-being central and a coaching practice that is not based on
abstract ideas about pro-social or positive development through sports, but rather starts
from young people’s concrete needs and life situations. In light of what we have described,
any framework that would be used needs to be flexible enough for practitioners to
effectively address the ever-changing challenges that young people, and those working
with young people, face. Although Hellison’s TPSR model is in essence a normative
framework, according to Martinek and Hellison (2009) it constitutes a still-evolving
developmental model with the intent to help stimulate and guide action for programme
development in a variety of contexts, as well as facilitate self-reflection and evaluation.
In this paper, it was also indicated that interventions based on pre-defined outcomes
have the potential effect of instigating exclusionary mechanisms. Taking into account
the complex and every-changing nature that makes up the lives of young people, it
could be questioned if supporting young people in socially vulnerable situations will be
best served with well-defined sports-based social interventions with easy-to-follow out-
comes. As argued above, it is necessary to re-socialise youth sports research in relation
to sports-based social practices working with socially vulnerable youth. If not, there is
the danger of de-socialising social vulnerability. This does not imply that practitioners
and policymakers should not be upfront about the assumptions underlying their sport-
plus practices and policies in terms of the outcomes that are reached (and also those that
are not reached), and how such outcomes are related to deep-rooted processes and
structures of social vulnerability.
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12 International Review for the Sociology of Sport 0(0)
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and Dr Filip Coussée (Belgium) for their
insightful and helpful comments on earlier drafts.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or
not-for-profit sectors.
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