4.2 How and where are children involved in your organisation?
Although safeguarding is there to protect everyone, it is often helpful to think about children as they can be more vulnerable.
By answering the question of where children are involved in your organisation, you can start to identify and minimise the risks anyone can face.
This is the first step towards developing a comprehensive safeguarding approach. Let’s think about how and where children are involved.
List the ways children are involved in your organisation’s activities
Make a list of all the situations or activities where children are involved in your organisation. Include face-to-face and online activities. To help you start, we've added a few examples in the face-to-face column.
| Face-to-face | Online |
|---|---|
| As athletes in weekly training. | |
| Attending competitions or training camps that include overnight stays away from home. | |
| Receiving medical treatment (e.g. physiotherapy or sports psychology sessions). | |
Comment
How many did you identify? Here are some we thought about – do any of these situations or activities match yours? Did you come up with any we didn’t?
| Face-to-face | Online |
|---|---|
| Competitions or training sessions held in public facilities (outdoor and indoor facilities). | Social media. |
| Strength, conditioning, and gym sessions. | Communication using email, text, or messaging apps. |
| Travelling to and from competitions or training camps. | Online coaching. |
| Staying in residential accommodation including in village and school halls. | Children’s information, performance data, and images held and used online. |
| Changing, showering, and toilet facilities. | Use of e-sport platforms and/or video gaming, including chat functions. |
| Attending education/teaching sessions. | Use of apps popular with children. |
| As coaches, officials, or in other roles. | |
| As spectators. | |
| Disability sport for child athletes. | |
| Children’s involvement in activities and events with funders, sponsors, or the media. |
You might find it surprising just how many diverse circumstances exist.
Each situation carries safeguarding risks when it comes to interactions or involvement with children. Some of these are common to every situation – for example, risks posed by people who may wish to abuse children, or the potential for poor equipment or facilities to harm children.
Identifying these risks will help you understand where action is needed.
4.1 Introduction
