As you will now hopefully be aware, Jo Evans and her team of dedicated BPJs have been working towards securing the Clubmark status for us. A notification was recently issued detailing what this means for the club. Having secured this in June, some of us were delighted to be there on Saturday June 25th 2016 when she was presented with the certificate by Nick Robinson, a Club and Coach Support officer for England Athletics. He is also a Clubmark assessor and thus the gentleman who assessed and successfully passed her hard work.

Visually impaired guide runner training course

That was not the only reason for being over in Brum that day though. Jo and 11 other BPJs had all put themselves forward to attend the first visually impaired guide runner training course.

We pretty much had the majority stake of attendance. A fair few of the group have already participated in the Outreach Programme devised to attain the Clubmark status. This was successfully launched on Wed June 8th and is a joint programme to host a running club for visually impaired students at New College, Worcester.

vi-training-1Others of us just expressed a personal interest to be involved for a variety of reasons and an enjoyable few hours was had by all learning about different degrees of visual impairment, as well as tether or guide rope types, varying ways of steering assistance and suggestions for communication techniques and styles.

A very balanced mixture of classroom and practical exposure gave us real understanding and first-hand experience of the relationship of trust needed to be able to guide run. At the end of the day it will come down to personal preference of both you and the person you are guiding, but this was a great starting point on which to base our ongoing learning.

VI TrainingFor those also with LIRF (Leader in Running Fitness) status, this course attendance will be added to their licence as part of their qualification. Anyone without a LIRF licence will receive a Guide Running Licence.  After a DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) check (which is what was previously known as a CRB or a Police Check), we will all be entered on a searchable register and database for anyone wishing to find a guide runner. The database is called the Find a Guide Database.

A list of LIRF qualified BPJs can be found on our Meet the Joggers page.

BPJs running the Outreach programme are:

  • Jo Evans
  • Nick Eacock
  • Wendy Cole
  • Kim Sparkes
  • Sarah Broadbent
  • Sarah Fernihough

Trained Guide Runners are:

  • Jo Evans
  • Nick Eacock
  • Wendy Cole
  • Kim Sparkes
  • Sarah Broadbent
  • Sarah Fernihough
  • Tracy Kennish
  • Neil Richards
  • Anna Borecka
  • Becky Dib
  • Kazzandra Bishop
  • James King

For any information on any of the above or Clubmark in general, please contact Jo Evans, the Clubmark co-ordinator using the Contact page.