Session 7 Bringing it all together: safeguarding at events

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An image is divided into two scenes. On the left, there are two golfers standing by dormitory bunk beds. On the right, there is a golf club and golf course. In front of it, two golfers and a coach are standing and conversing while a bus is parked nearby.

In this session, you will apply everything you have learned so far to explore safeguarding in the context of competitions.

Learning outcomes

In this session, you will:

Develop the basics of competition safeguarding, planning, and risk assessment

Explore effective reporting and case management during international events.

Let’s get started.

Competing at local, national, and international level is what many athletes work so hard for.

Competitions that involve elite-level participants attract large numbers of spectators, and may involve significant travel and overnight stays for athletes, staff, and volunteers.

Large competitions may also involve children in roles such as volunteers, flag bearers, ball kids, and athlete escorts.

Safeguarding arrangements need to apply to everyone involved and be embedded from the very start.

Let’s now consider a competition safeguarding plan in more detail.

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Two athletics officials stand either side of a giant clipboard. The paper on the clipboard is headed competition safeguarding plan, with lines of text and three green ticks below the heading.

We recommend creating a specific safeguarding plan for each competition, which sets the minimum operating standards for everyone taking part.

The plan can be used as a template for future events.

Activity: Patience describes developing her competition safeguarding plan

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A female Safeguarding Lead.

Listen to Patience’s account and develop a checklist based on her actions.

Download this audio clip.Audio player: patience_english_nc5266_2024_aug005a_7.3.mp3

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Transcript

PATIENCE

I developed the competition safeguarding plan with a child protection expert from a local NGO and a colleague from the organising team. We had a useful combination of experience, knowledge and skills that covered sport, competitions, and safeguarding. First, we identified where and how vulnerable individuals would be involved, from community members and athletes, to children and spectators.

We then engaged with all stakeholders – local authorities, protection and emergency services, as well as the competition organisers to identify the risks specific to the competition and local context. We created a risk mitigation plan, assessed existing safeguarding arrangements already in place, and made sure all measures for the competition were in line with the local legal and social context.

The plan set out what we expected everyone associated with the competition to do, and the arrangements that would be in place, before, during, and after the competition. This included identifying roles and responsibilities, having an agreed ratio of supervisors for children, defining how the safeguarding team would work with other teams, including security, legal and volunteer management, and making sure transport and accommodation were safe. We also agreed a dedicated budget for safeguarding.

It was important to start managing risk before the event took place. Actions included operating a safer recruitment process, sharing and enforcing codes of conduct, and providing safeguarding training and information to everyone. We required visiting teams to include parental consents, medical information, and emergency contact details as part of our athlete registration process.

We developed a clear, centralised system for reporting safeguarding concerns – with different ways for people to access this system and clear processes for responding. We developed a simple reporting form that everyone could use to capture key information. We also ensured the competition had effective security, promoting key contact details for competition safeguarding staff, and had processes to respond to lost or missing persons and emergency evacuations.

Finally, after the competition, we held a formal review of the safeguarding arrangements to help improve support for future competitions. We also monitored the progress of the safeguarding concerns that had been raised during the competition.

The plan was approved by the competition organisers and shared with all the stakeholder groups and organisations we had identified at the outset.

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Here’s our checklist – does it agree with yours?

• Identification of relevant local stakeholders and available resources.
• Safer recruitment, employment, and deployment of staff and volunteers.
• Codes of conduct.
• Risk assessment and mitigation plan.
• Reporting process supported by simple reporting forms.
• Agreed ratios of supervisors to children/young people.
• Missing persons process.
• Consents and medical information.
• Information for athletes, parents, staff, and volunteers.

You can download a Safeguarding Checklist for Smaller Activities and Events on the Safeguarding Resources site.

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An illustration of four groups of people involved in sports. Each group is drawn inside a speech bubble. Golfers. Officials. Referees. Coaches. In the middle of the speech bubbles are three sheets of documents or forms with an athletics stadium icon on them.

At large competitions there are lots of different stakeholders from different organisations, with different safeguarding responsibilities, and this can make safeguarding challenging.

To help address this, organisers should appoint a Competition Safeguarding Manager, who should create a network of individuals to implement safeguarding.

This will include people in different roles (venue or course managers, volunteer coordinators, discipline, safety and security, competition management, etc.) and also individuals from participating teams (in team-based competitions). They will all require an understanding of how safeguarding applies in practice.

In very large competitions with multiple venues, or for competition courses that cover a wide geographic area, a safeguarding focal point may even be needed in each location.

Now you explore pre-departure risk assessment, reporting, and case management in more detail through a case study.

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A female netball player holding a netball in one hand at waist level.

For many athletes, attending a large event and representing their region or country is a very special experience. Travelling, meeting other athletes, and experiencing different places and cultures, all offer valuable opportunities for athletes.

However, without undertaking risk assessments and putting adequate safeguarding arrangements in place, some of these same experiences may increase the risk of abuse.

Activity: Identify the safeguarding risks an athlete could face at a competition

By signing in and enrolling on this course you can view and complete all activities within the course, track your progress in My OpenLearn Create. and when you have completed a course, you can download and print a free Statement of Participation - which you can use to demonstrate your learning.

Comment

It is useful to think about the possible experiences of young athletes like this.

It clearly shows the potential impact of poor practice, bullying, and abuse on vulnerable individuals, and helps to emphasise why safeguarding arrangements at events are so important, particularly when athletes are away from home.

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An illustration of four officials. Referee, coach, umpire, team official. Each one is inside a circle. The four circles are joined together by lines which end in a drawing of a pencil.

Having a well-publicised system for reporting abuse is one of the essential parts of preparing for any competition.

When it is an international competition, there are even more considerations – such as making sure those taking part and the local organisers understand the system, reporting is available in different languages, and there are different ways for concerns to be shared. Offering the chance to report in more than one language, and identifying people who can act as translators can be challenging and will need resources.

The important thing is to think about different scenarios ahead of time, and work with those taking part in the event and local organisations, to create something that works.

There are some key aspects to consider about reporting processes at competitions.

Details about how to share a concern – in person, by phone, by email or online – should be easily accessible. Avenues for reporting concerns should include:

• Contacting local authorities and child/adult protection services directly if a concern is urgent or if someone is in imminent danger. This contact information must be clearly communicated and accessible to everyone.
• Approaching any member of the competition safeguarding staff or security team, who should know how to manage the concern.
• Speaking to the on-site Safeguarding Officers. Contact information and how they can be located must be clearly communicated to everyone.
• Contacting the competition organiser using their reporting tools, for example, an online safeguarding reporting mechanism, or completing simple reporting forms.

Part of the competition safeguarding plan should address how information about reporting safeguarding concerns can be shared with everyone.

Communication

Communication in a range of languages (including sign language) and using visual images is more likely to be effective – for example, you can use QR codes to link to online information that can be translated.

Now let’s think about what responding to concerns looks like for an international competition.

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Five labels each with a different phrase and an associated icon. The labels are “PLAN”, “BE CONSISTENT”, “CENTRALISE”, “SEEK EXPERT INPUT”, and “SHARE INFORMATION”. The icons include an ice-skating boot, tennis ball, hurdle, and rugby ball.

Reporting systems are only one part of the process. Competition organisers also need a system to respond effectively to safeguarding concerns.

This can be one of the most challenging parts of competition safeguarding – you may have a report concerning a victim from one country, an alleged abuser from a second country, all taking place in a third country. Or you may be made aware of an athlete experiencing abuse back in their home country, not directly connected to the event.

You need to do the work ahead of time to make sure cases don’t get passed from team to team, and that there is a clear system for dealing with concerns.

Finally, we consider some tips about this topic.

Responding to concerns at competitions – three tips:

1. The initial response should be about providing the potential victim(s) with the care and support they need. An initial assessment must be made of the seriousness of the concern reported. You might need someone neutral, not connected to the case, to act as an interpreter (including a sign-language interpreter for people who are hearing impaired). You may also need to contact the consular office of the person’s country of origin.
2. In collaboration with other relevant teams, a decision must be made about whether an alleged perpetrator should be immediately removed from the competition or if other measures could reduce the risk, for example, restricting accreditation.
3. Other responses will depend, for example, on whether the victim is a child or adult, a local citizen or an international visitor. With less serious issues, the initial decision may be for the matter to be passed back to the relevant stakeholder organisation (the visiting team, service provider, etc.) to take forward.

Ultimately, the most important thing is to set all your systems up well in advance so that everyone knows what to do once the competition is underway.

Congratulations on completing Course 3!

You should now have a greater understanding of the role of the Safeguarding Lead and what you need to do to strengthen safeguarding in your own organisation.

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A female Safeguarding Lead.

The Safeguarding in Sport series

Let’s hear again from Patience as she summarises everything you have learned from the three online courses in the Safeguarding in Sport series.

Download this audio clip.Audio player: patience_english_nc5266_2024_aug006a_7.9.mp3

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Transcript

PATIENCE

In the first course, Safeguarding Essentials, you learned what is meant by safeguarding in sport, how to recognise safeguarding risks in sport and how you can help to reduce risks. You also learned how to report safeguarding concerns, so that they can be responded to properly, and you started making plans for how you could take your next steps in safeguarding.

In the second course, Safeguarding Practice, you learned more about the role of culture in creating a safe environment, how to recognise the different forms of abuse, and how some people are more vulnerable. You explored what is meant by grooming, how it can be addressed, as well as what is meant by policies and procedures and how they can help prevent and respond to abuse. This allowed you to understand how safeguarding concerns are reported and how they should be responded to, in addition to starting to make plans for how your organisation can strengthen safeguarding.

This third and final course, Effective Safeguarding, has encouraged you to consider your role and responsibilities, who else can support you in your work, and the qualities and knowledge you will need as a Safeguarding Lead. You have also developed self-care strategies which help you to manage the challenges you might face in the role.

You have explored how safeguarding risk assessments help keep people safe during activities using each step in the process, from risk identification, to assessment, to managing the risk. You have learned how safer recruitment measures help reduce risks, managing risks in the digital world, and how to finalise a safeguarding policy and get it approved by senior management.

You have also examined how your safeguarding policy links to other relevant procedures and the steps you can take to finalise your procedures. You explored why codes of conduct should apply to everyone at any level, and how to clarify the consequences of individuals failing to comply with a code of conduct. You have developed your reporting process and how to embed confidentiality, information sharing and data protection when responding to safeguarding concerns.

Next, you considered the key steps in an ‘end-to-end’ case management process including making initial decisions, investigations, and case risk assessment. This evolved into understanding more about survivor-centred and trauma-informed approaches, what these approaches mean when responding to a disclosure, and examining the benefits of engaging with people with lived experience of abuse.

Lastly, you explored safeguarding in the context of competitions and how to develop the basics of competition safeguarding, in addition to how to build effective reporting and case management during international events.

By using your learning and the contacts you have made to support you in your role, we hope you now have the skills and insights you need to support effective safeguarding in your organisation. Good Luck!

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A banner says. Quiz and has a green tick and a red cross. Around this are four characters representing people involved in athletics.

Now it’s time to complete Course quiz 2 – it’s a great way to check your understanding of the course content so far.

This quiz contains 16 questions and a pass mark of 70% and above is required to obtain your digital badge and course certificate.

You can review the answers you gave, and which were correct/incorrect, after each attempt has been completed.

If you don’t pass the quiz at the first attempt, you are allowed as many attempts as you need to pass. There is a 24-hour delay between each attempt to allow you time to look back at the course content again.

To receive your course certificate and digital badge, you must have completed all the elements of the course and passed both quizzes.

Now go to the Quiz.