Into Coaching

The key mission of the DKF is to create an environment where disabled people can participate in martial arts, achieve and enjoy
the feeling that achievement brings through creating professional high quality coaching within an atmosphere of equity, opportunity and inclusion.

Correctly adapted and taught, karate is a non-contact, safe, fun and exciting sport which focuses on the personal mental, emotional and physical development of each individual.

The World Health Organisation states that there are 1 billion disabled people in the world, around 15% of the world's population

The 2012 post-Olympic Games research by the Sport and Recreation Alliance showed that over 80% of disabled people were considering taking up more sport yet only 20% of disabled people are participating in sport once per week. This means that there almost 800 million disabled people who would like to take up more sport and are not currently participating.

These statistics show that there is a significant demand for martial arts for people with disabilities whilst the DKFs projects have demonstrated that this demand can be met through tailored projects, properly trained coaches and the use of adapted syllabuses

At present there are no qualifications on the European Qualification framework for disability martial arts coaching. There is no advice or help for anyone wanting to take up coaching disabled people.

The DKF seeks to create recognised cross-national coaching courses to encourage more coaches to teach more disabled people.

We have forged strong relationships with all of the UK coaching organisations. We are a Licenced Centre for 1st4Sport Qualifications, a Coachwise Centre and a Licenced Workshop Partner with Sportscoach UK.
We will create the first ever Level 2 Disability Martial Arts Coaching Course which will include extensive modules on inclusion, disability coaching, integration and equity.
Current coaching courses for other sports consist of four weekends and 90 hours of guided learning which many coaches cannot spare the time for due to family or other coaching commitments. Arranging for coaches to all
attend the same four weekends is a logistical nightmare.
Therefore a further innovation will be that the theoretical part of the course will be online.

The project will be mainly concerned with the development of curricula, courses, joint study programmes; learning, teaching, training and the development of materials and methods;
project-based collaboration, peer learning, workshops, research and analysis;
capacity building and networking; information, guidance, coaching and counselling activities; improvement of qualifications frameworks, credit transfer, quality assurance; and training, teaching and learning activities for higher education, vocational education and training, school education, adult education and/or youth.