Engagement and partnerships
We have a team of Advisors to support local and national work. The Engagement Advisors cover nine regions across England. Along with our National Advisors, they support key strategic partners, including Active Partnerships and National Governing Bodies of Sport (NGBs). Our work enables these partners to be more effective in supporting disabled people to be active.
The team has five main areas of work:
Improving routes to market: We support the disability and sports sectors to increase their connections with disabled people, charities, local disability sports groups and third sector disability support agencies etc. By creating resources that identify key contact points, we provide the expertise to reach more disabled people.
Create and support networks: We organise and chair national briefing sessions as well as regional disability sport and physical activity forums.
Facilitate joint approaches: We develop national and regional engagement days for the sport and non-sport (disability) sector.
Providing strategic support: We work with the sport and non-sport (disability) sectors and offer resources, workshops and awareness of opportunities.
Self-assessment and improvement: We develop and deliver the Lead self-assessment improvement toolkit. This is designed to help sports sector partners to become more effective in delivering sport with disabled people and organisations.
Watch our engagement animation film
Contact our engagement team
Our engagement and partnerships team is:
- Ray Ashley – Strategic Lead – Partnerships
- Jess Cook – National Partnerships Advisor
- Dawn Hughes – National Engagement Advisor (leisure)
- Tom Webster – North East / North West Engagement Advisor
- Mark Fosbrook – West Midlands Engagement Advisor
- Catherine Slater – East Midlands / Yorkshire Engagement Advisor
- Nicola File – East / South East Engagement Advisor
- Ray Ashley – South West Engagement Advisor
All our Advisors' contact details are in our team pages
Complementing the 11 engagement factsheets below, you can now access more engagement resources with five new video presentations. Visit our 'effectively engaging disabled people' YouTube playlist.
Engagement factsheets

Find your local contact
Our Engagement team supports Active Partnerships and other partners within the English regions, to increase opportunities for disabled people. Active Partnerships can often be the first point of call for many people looking for local opportunities.