Session 2 Managing risk

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An athlete is hurdling over six obstacles on a track. Each hurdle is labelled with a step related to risk management. The steps are as follows: Identifying risks. List specific risks. Identify actions needed. Assess how likely each risk is. Allocate responsibilities. Monitor progress.

In this session, you will look at how a safeguarding risk assessment helps keep people safe during activities.

Learning outcomes

In this session, you will cover:

Each step in the process, from risk identification, to assessment, to managing the risk.

Safer recruitment measures that help reduce risks.

Managing risks in the digital world.

It is important to apply a consistent approach to undertaking a safeguarding risk assessment.

Below are six steps to help guide and inform risk assessments for activities or events of any size:

1. Identify the key general safeguarding risk areas.
2. List the specific risks associated with each of these risk areas in an event or activity.
3. Identify what actions are needed to mitigate (remove or reduce) each risk.
4. Label them high, medium, or low, based on how likely each risk is.
5. Decide who (or which department) will be responsible for addressing each risk, how it will be addressed, and by when.
6. Monitor progress as actions are taken to reduce specific risk levels and prioritise areas where risk levels are higher.

A risk assessment template can help guide and record this important process:

You can find the risk assessment template on the Safeguarding Resources site.

In the template we refer to ‘venues and facilities’. This means anywhere that sports activities take place, for example a rugby pitch, a golf course, or a swimming pool, as well as areas like changing rooms, or catering facilities.

Over the next few sections, you will work through this template. You start by understanding the general safeguarding risk areas.

It is useful to break down risk into the general safeguarding risk areas. These are common to every level and type of activity.

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The image is divided into two scenes. On the left, there are two rugby players standing by dormitory bunk beds, one is holding a rugby ball. There are bags and water bottles placed on the ground beside them. On the right, there is a modern building labelled “COMMUNITY STADIUM”. In front of it, two athletes and a coach are standing and conversing while a bus is parked nearby.

For the next two activities, imagine you are completing a risk assessment ahead of a national sports event where you have two teams attending – one of which is a team of para-athletes.

The teams will travel together with staff, on a local bus that has been hired for the week.

A lot of the athletes have never left their hometown before – they were all asked to provide emergency contact and medical information before leaving, but not all the forms have been collected.

The teams are all children, both boys and girls, and they will be staying in male and female dormitory room accommodation, with a shower and toilet block situated outside.

The accommodation has free, open Wi-Fi access, and most of the children will bring their mobile phones.

The venue for the competition is a community arena, which is open for anyone to enter and watch the matches. It has a basic medical unit, with a part-time doctor.

You have heard that local media will be covering the event, and that some people calling themselves ‘agents’ are attending to try and identify and sign-up talented young athletes.

There will be a few staff coming with the teams, some have had the standard safeguarding training, but a couple of new staff haven’t done the training yet. There will not be many women staff, so there might not be enough people to supervise the girls all the time.

The next step is to consider what action is needed to mitigate these identified risks.

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Minimising risks. A female skiing coach and a young female snowboarder are stood either side of a large graphic scale. The scale is semi-circular and is segmented green through shades of amber to red. The green is labelled low. The red is labelled high. The pointer on the scale is positioned in the middle of the green segment.

Once you understand the potential risks, you need to consider what needs to be done to eliminate or reduce these risks (known as ‘mitigating actions’).

Make sure staff understand and apply policies and procedures

Simply having the right policies or procedures in place is not enough. Make sure that people understand and commit to applying these in practice.

Next you explore how you assess each identified risk.

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A scale is semi-circular and is segmented green through shades of amber to red. The green is labelled low. The red is labelled high. The pointer on the scale is positioned in the middle of the green segment.

You now need to identify how likely it is that the risks will occur. It is helpful to use three risk probability levels: high, medium, and low.

High: There are currently no mitigating arrangements in place to address the risk – the probability is high because no action has been taken.

Medium: There are some mitigating arrangements in place, but these may not be consistently used, or understood by all – probability of an incident occurring is medium.

Low: There are robust mitigating arrangements in place, and these have been communicated and consistently applied by all – probability is low.

It is simply not possible to remove all identified risks – but you must take all reasonable steps to reduce risks. You should address high rated risks first, as these are more likely to happen.

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A hand holding a magnifying glass which is focusing on one of the three circular portraits of different athletics officials.

Step 5 is to allocate responsibility for taking the mitigation actions identified.

For relatively small activities and events, responsibility may lie with one or two members of staff – while for larger events there may be a planning or organising team.

It’s important to make sure that risk assessments are embedded from the start.

Risk assessment isn’t a one-time activity. It’s important that progress is reviewed regularly – particularly updating risk levels as mitigating actions are taken.

Communicating risk updates helps everyone prioritise.

For organisers of smaller events, we have produced a checklist on the Safeguarding Resources site that can help staff address the most important safeguarding issues.

Completing risk assessments is everyone’s responsibility

Share the risk assessment template with colleagues who are responsible for activities and provide guidance about how to use it. Over time, colleagues will get used to risk-assessing all their activities as a normal part of planning.

In the next section, you see risk mitigation measures in action by looking more closely at a safer recruitment process.

A best practice safer recruitment process has 12 stages.

You will look at each stage to understand what they contribute to the overall process, so you can adapt them to your context.

You may need to build relationships with those responsible for recruiting new staff in your organisation.

You can find examples of possible questions to use during the recruitment process on the Safeguarding Resources site.

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A pair of hands holding a smartphone. The smartphone is displaying a social media friend request notification. The screen shows a profile named “Coach Muchen” with an avatar of a person and a background image of mountains. The notification reads, “Coach Muchen sent you a friend request,” with options to “Respond” or “Message”. This image depicts a typical interaction on a social media platform.

In Course 2, you learned about some of the risks in the digital world.

Here are some of the key actions and arrangements that can help organisations reduce these online risks and respond when concerns are raised.

You can find more guidance on safeguarding people in the digital environment on the Safeguarding Resources site.

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A montage illustration of various sports split into four squares. The first square depicts a coach watching a young ice skater. The second square depicts a coach and a young netball player. The third depicts a coach and a young ice hockey player. The final square depicts a coach and a young golfer.

It is important that you and others get ‘informed consent’ before taking images. This is particularly relevant for official pictures.

Informed consent is not simply agreeing to the general idea of your image being taken and used. It involves a clear understanding and agreement to all of the points listed above.

Parents/carers should be asked for permission where images relate to children, but children should also be asked for permission too – in a format that they can understand.

You can find more guidance for photography on the Safeguarding Resources site.

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An atletics shirt with Task 1 written on it.

You will receive feedback comments on this task at the start of the next session.

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A young female person shouting into a megaphone.

The main learning and messages from this session are:

Safeguarding Leads will either undertake risk assessments themselves, or provide support to other staff or volunteers in completing them. A risk assessment is not a one-off action but a live process which should be updated regularly. It includes continuous monitoring to reduce risks. A six-step risk assessment template was shared. Twelve main safer recruitment actions were identified. Reducing digital risks involves policies that cover protecting personal information, and includes standards of online behaviour in codes of conduct. The risks associated with images can be reduced by having informed consent from the people in the images.

When you are ready, move on to Session 3: Finalising policy and procedures, where you will look at policies, procedures, and codes of conduct in more detail.