It's important to have a clear set of guidelines to make sure your organisation deals with safeguarding concerns effectively.
This page includes all the areas that should be included in a safeguarding policy – and the procedures to implement it – to create a safe environment for children and young people taking part in sport.
Use our safeguarding self-assessment tool to ensure you are doing everything you can to keep children safe.
Contents
Click on the following links to jump to a specific topic:
- Policy statement
- Definitions
- Responding to and reporting concerns
- Recording
- Codes of conduct
- Safer recruitment
- Supervision, support and training
- Whistleblowing
- Complaints
- Links to other organisational procedures
- Writing an implementation plan
Policy statement
A policy statement makes it clear to staff, volunteers, parents and children what your organisation will do to keep children safe.
Definitions
Our introduction to safeguarding section provides information about what is meant by safeguarding, child protection and the categories of child abuse as these pertain to a sports context.
More detailed descriptions of these topics can be found on the NSPCC Learning website:
Responding to and reporting concerns
It is not the responsibility of anyone working in a club or organisation to decide whether or not child abuse has taken place. However, there is a responsibility to act on any concerns by reporting these to the appropriate officer or the appropriate authorities.
It's important that each organisation has one or more people with specific responsibility for safeguarding. This person will:
- coordinate concerns about children and young people – see our incident reporting form
- support those working in clubs
- put safeguards in place
- act on reports of concerns – see our safeguarding reporting-procedure flowcharts
Each club should also have someone with a designated safeguarding role, such as a club welfare officer.
All concerns about a child should be reported to the club welfare officer or national safeguarding lead, following the National Governing Body (NGB) or Active Partnerships (previously County Sports Partnerships) procedures.
Where concerns are about child abuse, this may lead to a referral to children's services who may involve the police. If concerns are about poor practice, the NGB or Active Partnerships' procedures will define the course of action to address this.
For further information, see the following CPSU guidance:
- Safeguarding reporting procedures
- Responding to reports of non-recent abuse in sport
- Information sharing – safeguarding concerns
- Case Management Model tool
Recording
It is important that all concerns are recorded – including information about:
- the concern
- how it was responded to
- where it was reported to
- and what the outcome of this report was
Useful resources for this include our Incident reporting referral form and Case Management Model tool.
Your organisation should also be aware of how to store and retain this information – see our guidance on child protection records retention and storage.
Codes of conduct
Codes of conduct for staff and volunteers, parents and guardians, and children and young people should also be developed to ensure all those involved in the club are clear on what behaviour is expected and what will not be tolerated.
- sample code of conduct for parents and carers (PDF)
- sample code of conduct for staff and volunteers (PDF)
- sample code of conduct for children and young people (PDF)
Safer recruitment
The majority of people who want to work or volunteer with children within sport are well motivated. Without them sports clubs and organisations could not operate.
Unfortunately, some individuals are not appropriate to work with children and young people. It is therefore essential that you have effective recruitment and selection procedures for staff and volunteers to help screen out and discourage those who are not suitable from joining your club or organisation.
- for more information, see our safer recruitment topic page
The Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) helps employers make safer recruitment decisions and prevent unsuitable people from working with vulnerable groups, including children.
Supervision, support and training
Once recruited, all staff and volunteers should be well informed, trained, supervised and supported to ensure that they effectively safeguard children and know how to respond to any concerns.
The organisation should ensure that training and resources are available to encourage the development of staff and volunteers. This should include:
- an induction to the work and the organisation
- a trial period in which to develop skills whilst supervised
- ongoing support and monitoring
There are currently no formal qualifications specifically for safeguarding and protecting children in sport.
However, training developed by sports and other organisations is available to strengthen the skills and knowledge of the sporting children’s workforce to safeguard children and young people.
Training plays an important role in equipping staff and volunteers to do their job safely and effectively. Different safeguarding training is available depending on the person's role.
Whistleblowing
It's important that people within your organisation have the confidence to come forward to speak or act if they're unhappy with anything.
Whistleblowing occurs when a person raises a concern about dangerous or illegal activity, or any wrongdoing within their sports organisation.
The NSPCC has a whistleblowing advice line to support professionals who have concerns about how child protection issues are being handled in their own or another organisation.
Complaints
In order to ensure that you develop an open culture where children and staff feel able to raise any issues, it's important that your organisation has a procedure for dealing with complaints from a child, worker, volunteer, parent or carer.
This should be linked to the organisation's complaints procedures, ensuring the provision of support and advocacy for the people involved.
Links to other organisational procedures
It's useful to cross-reference other relevant organisational policies, including your:
- equity policy
- complaints and grievance procedures
- disciplinary procedures
- health and safety policy
Writing an implementation plan
Safeguarding implementation plans are important to inform the planning and prioritising of safeguarding work within the organisation. They should be based upon a sound assessment of safeguarding priorities, strengths and areas to build upon for the organisation.
To assist the development of this plan, the following questions should ensure that you have considered and included all relevant areas:
- Have you completed a self assessment of safeguarding within the organisation?
- this will help to identify areas to focus and build upon
- if you’re new to the safeguarding process, see our self-assessment tool
- alternatively, if your organisation has achieved the CPSU Safeguarding Standards, then to maintain and embed these standards, see the CPSU Safeguarding Framework
- Does your plan include all safeguarding work within the organisation?
- highlight the priorities but don’t forget to include ongoing areas of work and development too
- Are realistic timescales outlined throughout the plan?
- these should be spread throughout the year and be based upon established priorities
- Have you considered communication of new information?
- Are children, young people and parents engaged with the plans? Are there plans to involve and consult with them?
- Have you identified who is taking responsibility for each area? Is this divided between individuals? Are these individuals provided with appropriate support for the task?
- it's important that there's a whole organisational commitment to safeguarding and not just one person responsible for all tasks
- Have resources for each area of the plans been identified?
- this could include staffing, money, time, website resources, etc
- Are plans specific? How will you know when you’ve achieved your aims?
- How will the plan be reviewed and monitored throughout the year?
- it can be useful to build in steps to achieve each main area, to break this down into manageable chunks
You may find this template for a safeguarding implementation plan a useful resource in creating and implementing your plan.