Performance Lifestyle Futures team appoint Paralympic-specific role

The UK Sports Institute (UKSI) Performance Lifestyle (PL) Futures team has expanded to include a specialist Paralympic-focused role. This new appointment represents the UKSI and PL’s strong commitment to ensuring that the needs of Paralympic athletes are fully integrated and considered in the support and services that are available.

PL has been an integral part of the high-performance system for over 20 years, delivering holistic athlete support and development, and in 2022, a centralised Futures team was established to focus on athletes transitioning out of sport. This includes providing up to two years of support when an athlete comes off a World Class Programme (WCP), which is an increase from the previous total of six months and acknowledges the level of change athletes can experience during this time.

To ensure the PL Futures team represents athletes in the most inclusive way possible, Emily Hunton has been recruited as Futures Coach (Paralympics). Emily’s appointment enables the team to support the unique challenges a Paralympic athlete could face when transitioning off a WCP.

Emily brings 16 years of expertise from her career as an Occupational Therapist (specialising in return-to-work rehabilitation support within the NHS and the Ministry of Defence, MOD), combined with over 10 years of working within the UKSI across multiple Paralympic sports as both a PL practitioner and the Performance Lifestyle team’s Paralympic Lead.

We spoke to Emily to learn more about this new role and her future ambitions.

Emily, what does your Futures Coach (Paralympics) role involve?

There are three key strands to the work and delivery of the PL Futures team. One of the main aspects of my role is to work 1:1 with athletes (after the initial six months of support has been provided by the sport’s PL practitioner). I work with the athletes in a coaching and mentoring capacity to help them ‘ride the wave of change’ and navigate their way towards a purposeful and meaningful future beyond sport. Often this will involve focusing on purpose and identity outside of sport by using a strengths and values-based approach. This work can contribute to discovering what the next career for an athlete might be. We can also help athletes practically by supporting them with writing CVs, bespoke interview preparation and by helping secure work placement opportunities.

The second strand relates to the PL team and supporting the consistent delivery of transition support across all sports and athletes. We are on hand to provide guidance and support to practitioners, and we are also working on resources that the whole team can use to support athletes in preparing for and managing change as they transition in, through and beyond a WCP.

The third strand of our role involves working within the high-performance system to implement strategies and support key stakeholder projects that are taking place. We work with the British Elite Athletes Association (BEAA) by supporting the Athletes’ Alumni and with UK Sport as part of the collaborative delivery of the Athlete Support Strategy.

What are your aims and ambitions in this new role?

I am passionate about inclusive workplaces, reasonable adjustments and supporting the individual’s bio-psycho-social needs to ensure we are setting athletes up to succeed and thrive in the workplace. One of my goals is to influence future employers to ensure their workplaces are set up for Para-athletes to thrive by reducing barriers and misperceptions about disability in the workplace. In the past, companies have contacted us to work with Olympic athletes and have overlooked the value and skill set of our Paralympic athletes. I’m pleased to say that this landscape is changing, and more employers are interested in the skills our Para-athletes can offer.

We are passionate as a team to make these future work placement opportunities as inclusive as possible, and we frequently find ourselves needing to support employers to use imagery and language that speaks directly to our Paralympic community to increase interest in some areas of work they may not have perhaps considered before. Another ambition of mine is to offer more opportunities for athletes still in sport. I want to help athletes engage in more flexible paid or unpaid opportunities to support athlete well-being, Mental Health and Professional Development when they are injured for example.

Why is it significant to have this bespoke Futures Coach (Paralympic) role?

It is important because transition and change can differ for our Paralympic athletes. There had been talk about the need for such a role after encountering some more complex Paralympic-specific challenges, and to ensure the support we are offering them is truly holistic and inclusive.

When a Para-athlete leaves a sport, it can be difficult for some of them to adjust to a workplace where they may be the only person with a physical disability after being involved in an inclusive WCP where they will interact with other people with numerous disabilities daily. That change can be difficult, particularly with their identity, how they perceive themselves and how others perceive them, so understanding those experiences and the workplace landscape ensures we can provide the best support. I think some workplaces are still unsure about what they need to do to support an individual with a disability. However, it can sometimes be less than they might perceive so transparency is key.

My background as an Occupational Therapist means I can draw on that experience to help the employer and their Occupational Health team understand what adaptations they may need to make initially, to bridge the gap between sport and work and help the athlete settle quicker into the role. This helps to ensure we are setting athletes up to succeed with confidence whilst helping to reduce any self-limiting beliefs they may have.

Also, in the context of de and re-classification, our Para-athletes can experience an abrupt ending to their career. Research has shown that some Para-athletes can feel a sense of not being ‘disabled enough’ when they are de-classified from their sport yet, in the outside world, they are perhaps claiming benefits for their disability, which can feel very polarised. In contrast, some Para-athletes have reported feeling ‘penalised’ for improving their function and being re-classified into a more competitive category, sometimes forcing their decision to leave a sport altogether. Therefore, working on areas such as personal values and strengths can be validating for our Para-athletes when it comes to developing their identity outside of sport.

The ‘understanding self’ sessions with a Para-athlete can be multi-faceted with heightened emotion and sometimes trauma-provoking when compared to their Olympic counterparts, particularly if the athlete had a swift pathway into sport following a life-changing injury or perhaps transitioned into sport from another institution such as the military.

What does the Performance Lifestyle Futures team do and how do athletes get in touch?

Transitioning from a WCP and its funding can often involve a huge amount of change and emotion. This could be on a personal level, in terms of your purpose, identity, and social connections, as well as practically to areas such as your finances, accessibility, where you will live and making the next career move happen.

In our 1:1 work with athletes, and specifically in our initial conversations with an athlete, we will go through areas such as ‘Understanding Change’, ‘Understanding Self’ and ‘Connecting with the World’. Enabling the athlete to identify where they feel most engaged and in need of support helps us explore and identify the purpose and focus of the support and work we are going to do together, which includes how any progress will be reviewed and the related timeframes, to ensure anything is appropriately prioritise and is at the right pace for the individual.

The Performance Lifestyle Futures team is formed of three individuals with over 30 years of experience working within the UKSI.

If you are an athlete, work with one, or know a Paralympic or Olympic athlete who is on a WCP, or has left a WCP in the past two years, you can contact the PL practitioner in your sport or email PL.Futures@uksportsinstitute.co.uk for more information about the support available.

Learn more about Performance Lifestyle and Emily’s work by accessing the UKSI Insider podcast.