The National Commission for Inclusive Sports, an entity created by the Spanish Sports Association (ADESP) to advance towards the full inclusion of athletes with disabilities in the international, national and regional spheres, has already agreed on a ‘Decalogue for integration’. An idea that came up in the meeting they held at AS on April 12.
He The target is set at December 31, 2026, when the International Paralympic Committee has set the limit for all national federations whose internationals have integrated athletes with disabilities to do the same.
Now, with the Decalogue for Integration, a roadmap is established to carry it out in the federations. Measures that must also be carried out with adequate financing.
THE DECALOGUE FOR INTEGRATION
1. Any integration process must be agreed between the sports federation for people with disabilities that transfers the sport and the federation that receives it. The integration process must be understood as a desired process and not imposed by regulations.
2. All federative integration process must be reflected in a transfer agreement detailing all aspects of the process: dates, transfer of technicians, federative licenses, selection of athletes, organization of competitions, eligibility criteria and functional classifications. , sports initiation and sports development, training of technicians, promotion of the new modality, etc.
3. A mechanism must be established to deal with the financing of the integration processes, essential for their implementation, consigning specific budgets and finalists for the activity of people with disabilities. Both the Higher Sports Council at state level and the General Sports Directorates of the Autonomous Communities should allocate budgets for these federative integration processes in a stable manner over time.
4. There must be a harmonization between the federal integration model at the state level with respect to that of the autonomous communities. Therefore, the integration processes that take place in the Spanish federations must be reproduced in the corresponding regional federations, taking into account the particularities of the current structures of the sports federations of people with disabilities at the regional level.
5. The future role that the entity or entities inheriting the current Spanish Sports Federations for People with Disabilities must have when they have transferred their sports modalities must be clearly determined. In these federations there is knowledge about promotion, functional classifications, recruitment of athletes, etc., and all this supposes an undeniable value that must necessarily be taken advantage of. This new role must be made clear both at the state and regional level.
6. The federations that integrate sports modalities for people with disabilities must consider measures, budgetary or of any other type, aimed at eliminating barriers that in actual practice make integration and inclusion in sport impossible: the high cost of specific sports equipment for people with disabilities, the lack of accessibility in facilities, the training (initial or continuous) of sports technicians in the sports modalities of people with disabilities or the need for support personnel for the practice of sports for people with severe disabilities, as well as the availability of support athletes for people with visual disabilities, such as athletics, triathlon, ski guides, tandem pilots, soccer goalkeepers for the blind, etc.
7. The federations that integrate sports modalities for people with disabilities will implement measures to guarantee the representativeness of these people in the governing bodies of the federation.
8. The federations that integrate the sports modality practiced by people with disabilities must promote the continuous training of the technicians and coaches of the respective modality so that they have sufficient training to incorporate athletes with disabilities in their respective fields, preferably with a focus inclusive.
9. The federation that integrates a sports modality for people with disabilities will use inclusive language in all its terminology. It is suggested to use the recommendations of the Spanish Paralympic Committee and the current Sports Law in this regard.
10. The sports federations will undertake internal and external dissemination and communication actions, with which to value the objectives and results of the sports integration processes and the great contribution they make to the final goal of achieving the full inclusion of the sports federations. people with disabilities in society.
