Gary Dack, Head of Safer Sport at Norwich City Football Club, shared his thoughts on a recent policy change: The club is now committed to safeguarding all adults, and not just “adults at risk”.
Norwich City Football Club are passionate advocates of creating a safer culture for everyone who uses our services. At any given point, any one of us can experience situations where we might be vulnerable to harm. So our commitment extends to everyone, from visitors on matchday, to young adults at our elite Academy, and to our employees and volunteers.
So far, the football industry has focused on safeguarding children and “adults at risk”. But we are keen to ensure that our language does not preclude the importance of also keeping people safe who do not meet these criteria.
Safeguarding All Adults
Not many people in football are familiar with the 2014 Care Act. Therefore, many people misinterpreted the term “adult at risk”, which could cause some confusion.
So to further educate and empower our staff, we have removed the phrase “adults at risk” from policy and procedure. This should make it clear that we share a responsibility to safeguard all adults.
We now encourage our staff to treat every person as an individual, and to assess a much wider scope of need. This move has also helped staff broaden their understanding of hidden disabilities, as well as the wider impact of harms such as discriminatory or domestic abuse.
Safer Sport
Our experience showed us that staff and customers often believed safeguarding to be an entirely child-centric activity. Many had negative views on training and DBS requirements. While our staff understand the need for compliance, pressure from their individual roles often meant that safeguarding could be a lesser area of focus.
To combat this, and to further drive change, we have also chosen to subtly dilute the use of the word ‘safeguarding’ through the creation of a new ‘Safer Sport’ Department.
The strategic aims of the Department are to:
- Champion the rights of all children and adults.
- Develop a culture where positive player wellbeing enables them to perform at their best through quality care, guidance, and support
- Create environments where everyone feels safe, valued and respected.
- Make it as difficult as possible for anyone to abuse others.
- Eliminate risk through safe practice.
To support this, we have developed a unique club branding, which you can see at the top of this post. We are using this branding to reinforce our commitment to creating a safer culture for all.
Learn more about the Norwich City Football Club Safer Sport department.