A Safeguarding Adults Checklist For Board Champions

This checklist may help you and your board move beyond simple compliance and into meaningful cultural oversight. It can help you to ask the questions that reveal how safe, respectful, and empowering your organisation truly is for adults. 

Culture & Environment

• Do we understand the cultural pressures adults experience in our sport? Examples might include alcohol‑centred environments, social pressure, performance expectations, financial pressures and gambling, grooming, power imbalances, and control. 
• Have we considered whether any traditions or “norms” in our sport could create risk or silence concerns? 
• Are we actively promoting psychological safety? 

Reporting & Response

• Are our reporting routes clear and accessible, and do people trust them?
• Do adults know how to raise concerns confidentially? 
• Could we access independent advice or investigations when necessary? 
• If someone reported a concern, are we confident that they’d face no retaliation or negative consequences? 

Governance & Oversight

• Is adult safeguarding a standing board agenda item? 
• Do we receive meaningful insights on culture, and not just on compliance metrics? 
• Do staff and volunteers understand their responsibilities for safeguarding adults?  

Survivor Informed Practice 

• Do our policies and processes reflect trauma‑informed principles? 
• Are we learning from survivor voices and experiences, and from wider sector research? 
• Are we confident that adults are treated with dignity, choice, and control?

Prevention & Workforce

• Are staff and volunteers trained in adult safeguarding including coercion, power imbalance, and psychological harm? 
• Do we have clear expectations around conduct, boundaries, and alcohol‑related behaviour? 
• Are we monitoring environments where adults may be more vulnerable or at risk of abuse or harm? 

Further Questions To Ask Yourself as a Board Champion

• How can I use this checklist to open up meaningful discussion with the board about our culture, our reporting routes, and the experiences of adults in our organisation? 
• Which areas of the checklist give me confidence? Which areas raise questions we need to explore together as a board?
• What would assure me that adults in our sport feel safe, respected, and able to speak up?