Our Mission
Our mission is, through the sport of rugby, to make a material difference in the lives of young people who experience or have experienced Adversity in Childhood, ACEs*, poverty or mental health issues, across the UK.
*Adverse Childhood and Community Experiences
The impact of the scheme is measured in the following ways:
Research: three forms of research including deep case studies using constructivist grounded theory approaches.
Quarterly progress reports from each club, including data from each individual Player Development Plan (PDP)
Tracking of attendance to club rugby
players achieving internal club awards
Community Liaison Officer reports
Each young player engaged with star* has a Personal Development Plan with personalised targets under three areas:
School Reports
The impact of being engaged with star* is regularly reported by teachers and leaders in schools, with differences in behaviours and resilience often noted.
Internal Club Awards
It is common for young people referred to a club via star* to achieve awards such as ‘most improved player’, ‘team player’ or.
Representative Rugby
Some young people, referred into grass roots clubs via star*, achieve so much that they are selected to represent the club at different levels.
Research
As the only sports charity in the UK currently to use Constructivist Grounded Theory as our evidence base, we engage in three forms of research to measure impact: Broad, Specific and Deep.
Broad Research asks three questions of anyone at anytime involved in the scheme with the aim is to understand the reach of star*. All team members are empowered to collect responses from the Chair of the board to the newest regional manager. This work is continuous and ever evolving.
Specific Research looks at the impact of the scheme on a specific group or club level with the aim of understanding a specific phenomena. such as increased referrals or accelerated achievements of PDPs. This is usually conducted through prompted monologues (unstructured interviews) by our Lead Researcher.
Deep Research is focused on tracking the journey of individual young people new to star* across the regions. Through a series of deep prompted monologues, Regional Managers listen to not only the young person but all the adults around them including teachers, coaches and family members. Repeated three times in a season, the grounded approach seeks to understand the profound changes that can occur as a result of star*.