Safeguarding in sport means creating a safe physical and emotional environment so that all children and young people can enjoy and thrive in sport and physical activity.
It’s more than a sports club safeguarding policy; it’s having the right people in place, commitment to putting children first, and good coaching practice. This will all help your club or activity to spot and respond appropriately to any safeguarding concerns, as well as supporting children to feel included and continue to take part in sport.
What does safeguarding mean?
- Safeguarding is a broad term and is a comprehensive approach that goes beyond responding to abuse. It includes prevention, empowerment, protection, and promotion of children’s welfare, giving all children the opportunity to grow up safely and healthily, and achieve the best outcomes in life.
- Welfare is a child’s health, needs, development and overall wellbeing, including their safety.
- Child protection is just one part of safeguarding and focuses on protecting individual children identified as suffering or likely to suffer harm and includes responding to concerns.
Although you’re likely to focus on safeguarding inside a sport or physical activity environment, you also have a duty to act on worries or concerns outside a sport setting, such as reporting something you hear or see to statutory agencies or signposting someone to a support service.
Safeguarding children in sport
To create a safe environment means firstly understanding the children and young people who take part in your sport or physical activity. Why are they at your club, what are their lives like and what do they want to get out of being there? This should shape how and what you offer, including your approach to safeguarding.
An organisation that feels safe to children and young people puts their wellbeing and safety above all else. This culture is created by listening to the voices of children in everyday activities and valuing what they say; from asking their views about training sessions and competitions to giving them control over when and how they take part.
Once they know you will listen, it’s more likely they’ll talk to you if they have a concern.
Who is responsible for safeguarding?
Your organisation should have dedicated people responsible for driving and championing safeguarding as well as reporting and escalating safeguarding concerns. The job title isn’t as important as the safeguarding role, responsibilities and experience.
Although your organisation will have roles focused on ‘safeguarding’ or ‘welfare’, safeguarding is a team effort, and everyone has a responsibility to act. Having a SMART safeguarding plan can help you distribute ownership over tasks and goals, so it doesn’t all land on the safeguarding lead officer.
Safer recruitment in sport
It’s not enough that your staff and volunteers excel in their sport, but they must also value the rights of children, seek to promote inclusion and understand how to communicate and engage with parents and carers.
Most people who want to work or volunteer with young people are well motivated; without them sports organisations could not operate. Unfortunately, some individuals are not appropriate to work with children and young people, whether that’s because of past criminal history, unsuitable or unsafe values, or harmful intentions. It is essential that you have effective safer recruitment and selection procedures for all staff and volunteers.
This will help to screen out and discourage those who are not suitable from joining your club or activity. It will also help you to determine what values are important to your organisation and make sure you select staff based on those values as well as those most technically suitable for the position.
Training and safeguarding awareness
The person with primary responsibility for managing and reporting safeguarding concerns and for putting procedures into place should receive adequate training to enable them to do this role effectively.
But it’s not always going to be this person who spots a concern or who a child talks to about something that worries them. All staff and volunteers should be given training or awareness of good safeguarding practice relevant to their role. Everyone should feel confident that they can recognise signs of abuse or a concern, respond in the moment to keep the child feeling safe and know who to report it to.
By having everyone receive the right safeguarding training, your organisation will be more prepared should signs and indicators of abuse or a concern happen.
Benefits of safeguarding in sport
Prioritising safeguarding as an approach to how you do sport or physical activity has numerous benefits, wider than simply spotting or preventing harm.
It reaches into all aspects of organisation operations; for example, how you approach behaviour, recruitment, reporting, board meetings, data protection, communication with children, running competitions, inclusion, youth engagement, use of artificial intelligence, parental involvement... the list goes on.
Safeguarding in sport can help bring out the best in children and keep them safe, so they can enjoy taking part in sport and physical activity. It can help them develop a lifelong love of sport, build deep friendships, achieve and fail safely, and belong to an inspiring community that can give them a solid foundation for a healthy life.
It can also keep staff and volunteers safe by reducing near misses and misunderstandings that could lead to investigations.
Examples of safeguarding concerns in sport
Every organisation, from national governing bodies (NGBs) right through to a small grass-roots community club, will have escalation and thresholds for when and how they deal with concerns. This may be based on resource and capacity, organisational structure and legal criteria.
Below are just some examples of safeguarding concerns and child abuse that could happen in sport.
- A coach using humiliating or degrading language to motivate children.
- An adult volunteer sending private messages to a young athlete outside of agreed communication channels.
- Bullying, teasing or exclusion between teammates.
- A child disclosing abuse that is happening at home.
- Unsafe ratios of adults to children during training sessions or away trips.
- Discrimination based on disability, race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.
- A coach pressuring an injured child to continue training or competing.
- Inappropriate physical contact between an adult and a child.
- Inappropriate physical contact between peers.
- Sharing photos or videos of children without the correct consent.
- Concerns about a staff member's behaviour towards children, even if no child has made a disclosure.
As you can see, some safeguarding concerns also include concerns about data protection and equality and diversity, therefore it may also be appropriate to report these concerns to other staff or organisations such as your EDI lead or data protection officer.
Now you know what safeguarding in sport is, you can explore the rest of our website to develop your knowledge further and help children and young people thrive in your sport.