Article written by Olivia Cannon
The National Safeguarding Adults Week is approaching. Here’s how your sport or activity club can get involved.
The National Safeguarding Adults Network are launching the first ever National Safeguarding Adults Week from the 19th – 25th November 2018. Safeguarding adults is a responsibility for every sport and physical activity organisation and getting it right is crucial to widening participation and ensuring safe sport for everyone involved.
The week will involve a range of activities to raise awareness, each day concentrating on a different risk, with the weekend focusing specifically on safeguarding adults in sport. There is plenty that your organisation can do to join in with the Week in order to raise awareness for safeguarding and develop best practice for adults at risk.
To assist with the running of the Week, ACT have taken on two students from the University of Nottingham, Maisie and Olivia. They are looking forward to their time on placement to get experience in event management, marketing and writing blog posts such as this one!
How to get involved
Introduce your safeguarding officer
All members of your sports club have the responsibility to act on any suspicions they may have regarding safeguarding. To do this, they need to know who to take their concerns to. Therefore, it is crucial to introduce your members to their safeguarding officer. You could do this by:
- Creating a poster showing the name, face and contact details of your Club Welfare
- Alerting your members to the poster and explaining that this representative is their first port of call if they suspect a safeguarding issue.
Encourage discussion on safeguarding
In order to practice effective safeguarding, everyone needs to be aware of what warning signs can be indicative of abuse and well-being in sport. They also need to be aware of how to follow up a potential safeguarding concern. Open discussion is integral to this. To make your club and members aware you can:
- Run a safeguarding talk in your organisation where you discuss who might be at risk and how to spot it.
- Set up and implement a framework for members to report safeguarding concerns.
- Answer any questions your club and members may have on safeguarding in sport.
- Create your own resources and information, like this from Clubline Football.
“As part of National Safeguarding Adults Week, Kent Sport are planning an event to help spread awareness and increase knowledge across the county. This event will consist of a Safeguarding Adults in Sport workshop and Mental Health First Aid workshop delivered by local partners at Mind.”
Share what you are doing on the #SafeguardingAdultsWeek
Be a part of helping ACT raise awareness.
During the Safeguarding Week, share what your organisation is doing with the #SafeguardingAdultsWeek hashtag on Twitter.
You can use the hashtag to share our safeguarding resources with your followers, as well as any of your own that you may have produced for your own sport or club.
Some suggested tweets:
Use this template if you have something specific planned:
We are supporting #SafeguardingAdultsWeek by [YOUR ACTIVITY]
Head here for more information: [RELEVANT LINK]
Or if you just want to show your support, use this one:
November 19 – 25 is the first ever #SafeguardingAdultsWeek.
This week is about being better, together.
All sports organisations are responsible for safeguarding adults, but we can only get it right with a true open discussion.
Please retweet to help us spread the word, and head here for more information on this issue: https://www.anncrafttrust.org/events/national-safeguarding-adults-week/
Make use of ACT resources
The Ann Craft Trust have a range of essential safeguarding resources covering information needed to assist your understanding of how to best keep adults safe in your organisation. Taking time to assess these policies and practices is a great opportunity to focus on safeguarding adults at risk. You can:
- Explore the Ann Craft Trust Resources Centre for more information and download the Safeguarding Adults in Sport and Activity Resource Pack to distribute to your club and members
- Book an ACT Safeguarding for Sports and Activity Organisations Course.
- Sign up for the National Safeguarding Adults Week notifications and resources email list.
Here are some of our resources for safeguarding adults in sport and activity:
- The ACT Safeguarding Adults in Sports Resource Pack – Contains essential information on key issues concerning safeguarding adults in sport. Features a guide to setting your own safeguarding policies and procedures, and information and advice concerning government legislation, initiatives, common conditions and a directory of useful contacts and organisations.
- Safeguarding Adults in Sports Policy Template – A template to help you create their your Safeguarding Adults Policy and Procedures Document.
- Safeguarding Adults in Sports Policy Template for Sports Clubs – A shorter version for clubs and affiliated organisations, to help you create your own Safeguarding Adults Policy and Procedures Document. Thanks to the Forest Flyerz, part of the Waltham Forest Hockey Club, for their help in developing this.