“It could never happen here.”
This is what we so often tell ourselves when we read reports of abuse or grooming in sport and activity organisations. “It’s terrible that it happened, but it could never happen in my organisation, could it?”
The problem is that abuse and grooming can occur at any level in any sport. What’s more, though a lot of people think only children can be exploited, anyone at any age can fall victim to any type of abuse.
If you’re involved in running a sport or activity club or organisation, you need to develop a thorough understanding of who’s involved in your sport, and how your various coaches, participants, and volunteers interact and engage with each other.
You need systems in place to ensure that anyone involved in your sport or activity would know what to do if they ever feel like something’s not right. And you need a process in place for reviewing these systems, so you can identify any room for improvement.
In short, you need to work towards creating a safer culture in your sport or activity.
Creating Safer Cultures in Sport and Activity
What does it mean to create a safer culture in your sport or activity?
It means that you place welfare, safety, and wellbeing at the heart of your club or organisation’s values and actions. You create an environment where everyone can feel confident that their concerns will be heard and addressed appropriately.
Creating a safer culture means you encourage continuous learning and reflection at all levels. And it means you lead with positive actions and values to empower everyone with the confidence to challenge and instigate change.
Of course, you want to make your sport and activity group as welcoming and inclusive as possible. The question is, where to begin?
The whole thing can feel daunting – overwhelming, even. That’s why we created The Safeguarding Adults Roadmap.
By breaking the process down into six manageable stages, The Roadmap is here to help you develop effective strategies for implementing meaningful policies and procedures in your sport.
The Safeguarding Adults Roadmap – Stage One – Identify Risk and Assess Need
The start of your Roadmap journey is an audit to cover your current:
- Governance and leadership.
- Target audience.
- Management systems.
- Policies and procedures.
This means you’ll take a close look at the way you currently do things in your organisation or club. You’ll explore what works, along with any areas where things could be better.
The things you learn about your club or organisation at this stage will help you better understand the actions you may need to take throughout the rest of your Roadmap journey.
Stage one will help you establish a snapshot of your organisation as it exists today. You’ll come to understand all the possible areas of risk, while identifying the actions you and your organisation may need to take to manage this risk.
You’ll learn how to prioritise risks, and we’ll give you some guidance on how you can develop your action plan in terms of budget, time frames, and responsibilities.
Here’s what an organisation that already went through the Roadmap process has to say about their experience:
SportCheer England is a new national governing body working to support safeguarding adults in our member clubs. We are therefore very thankful to the Ann Craft Trust for their continued expertise and guidance.
We welcome the new Roadmap tool. It creates a simple step-by-step process for our clubs to develop adult safeguarding policies and procedures that work effectively for their specific circumstances.
Cheerleading is growing in popularity, and more adults are coming to the sport through university participation and masters teams. It is therefore important that coaches and gym owners get a handle on how to effectively support adult safeguarding and manage safeguarding concerns.
Joey Gamper Cuthbert, Chair of the Board, SportCheer England
