Session 8 Prioritising your next steps – action planning

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

This session will help your organisation – and specifically the Safeguarding Lead – to begin to develop a safeguarding Action Plan.

Learning outcomes

In this session, you will:

Learn how to develop a safeguarding Action Plan.

Identify what safeguards already exist in your organisation.

Set your safeguarding priorities.

Explore staff training and education.

Collate and analyse information about safeguarding.

You start by exploring why a safeguarding Action Plan is important.

The overarching goal of safeguarding is ‘to create a safe environment for everyone’. This goal is usually underpinned by two main aims:

• Prevent abuse from happening.
• Respond effectively when concerns arise.

To achieve these aims, every organisation should have its own safeguarding Action Plan that identifies and prioritises the steps it needs to take.

For example, to:

• Establish procedures to cover safer staff recruitment.
• Provide appropriate safeguarding training to staff.
• Establish clear standards of behaviour for all stakeholders.
• Develop a process to receive and respond to safeguarding concerns.

This plan should include details about all the actions needed to achieve all these steps, who is responsible, and a timeline for completing them. Most steps will require a series of linked actions to be undertaken, often over an extended period of months or years.

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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 a tick on them. Also on the graphic are some green ticks and some question marks.

Understanding what safeguarding measures already exist across your organisation can help you identify where there may be gaps and therefore potential risks. This is the starting point for identifying priorities and developing a safeguarding Action Plan.

In the next activity, Patience shares her experience of assessing what safeguarding measures are in place in her organisation.

Assessing safeguarding measures

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A female safeguarding lead.

Listen to Patience’s explanation and the safeguarding actions she identified.

Once you have considered all the actions, identify which three actions you would prioritise.

Download this audio clip.Audio player: nc5265_2024_aug004_unicef_ii_patience-english.mp3

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Transcript

I knew from news stories and research that talented young athletes are at greater risk of being abused. So, I decided that I should assess the safeguarding measures at our National Youth Training Centre as a priority. When I looked at the safeguarding there, I found it was ‘mixed’. There were some things I think were done really well, like providing modern, clean facilities including the dormitories, and running background checks when we employ new staff, including coaches.

But there were other aspects where a lot more should be done. For example, the codes of conduct for staff weren’t very clear and mostly focused on on-field coaching behaviour. Measures to supervise the children, especially in the evenings, were not very consistent. And although our organisation had run induction sessions for athletes, we hadn’t provided any safeguarding information to them or their parents. We didn’t have a named Safeguarding Lead within the Centre.

Finding out what safeguarding measures did exist and what didn’t helped me draw up a plan to improve safeguarding at the Centre.

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All these actions will help safeguard athletes; they are all important and need to be addressed. However, Patience needed to prioritise some of these actions based on her assessment of their urgency.

Which THREE of Patience's actions do you think are the most appropriate? Vote for your top three actions in the opinion poll below Choose your three actions from a list. Please note that your vote in the poll is anonymous. Other learners cannot see how you have voted, and you cannot see how they have voted. You can see the vote tally only.

Comment

There is no right or wrong answer regarding the priorities, but it is important for you to be able to explain how you decided to order the tasks.

Here are the three priorities that Patience considered most urgent.

• Appointing a dedicated Safeguarding Lead at the centre was a very high priority for Patience since this person will drive and support all safeguarding activities and will provide a contact point for anyone with concerns.
• A code of conduct makes it clear about the organisation’s expectations in terms of standards of behaviour and Patience felt it was a fundamental early step. It provides a baseline for everyone to help identify good and bad practice.
• Adequate living conditions were also a priority for Patience because they immediately impact on the general health, safety, and wellbeing of the children.

Every organisation will have some safeguarding measures in place – even if they don’t use the word ‘safeguarding’ to describe them – and every organisation will still have work to do to strengthen their safeguarding measures. You may find that safeguarding measures are only in place for some activities, or in some facilities – and are not part of a comprehensive, consistent approach.

This is why it is so important for you to gain a picture of what measures are in place, for whom, and where, to help you plan for how to address any gaps.

You will explore this in more detail in the next section.

Once you have identified any gaps in safeguarding, it’s important that your organisation develops a safeguarding Action Plan which will capture all the areas that need to be prioritised and covered.

An Action Plan is a simple way for an organisation to identify priorities and monitor progress across the full range of safeguarding plans and actions. It should be used to help your organisation plan and prioritise work.

An overall Action Plan will detail the steps you need to take to strengthen and embed safeguarding. The plan needs to make clear what needs to be done, by when, and by who.

Over time, actions may become more specific. Some actions can only be identified after areas of risk have been identified.

Let’s hear from Patience again as she describes her safeguarding Action Plan.

Patience’s Action Plan

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A female safeguarding lead.

Listen to Patience talking about her safeguarding Action Plan. How did developing the plan help her? What kinds of safeguarding actions did she include?

Download this audio clip.Audio player: nc5265_2024_aug005_unicef_ii_patience-english.mp3

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Transcript

My organisation’s safeguarding Action Plan was one of the most useful documents we developed. It gives us an overview of all the organisation’s safeguarding activities and plans in one place. Once the relevant safeguarding activities were included, it was great to feel clearer about what we were already doing, as well as keeping on top of planned actions.

The document is ‘live’, it is updated monthly. Some of the actions in it refer to things we already do and will carry on doing, like requiring our coaches to have safeguarding training. Others were very new to us, like introducing safer recruitment.

Priority actions, like developing our safeguarding policy, are highlighted, with details of who would be involved, the timescales, and implications for staff time and finance.

An Action Plan is a relatively simple way for leaders to review our safeguarding progress, identify problems, and allocate resources. I’d definitely recommend you develop a plan like this.

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What did you notice?

Patience found that her Action Plan provided an overview of all the safeguarding work needed across the organisation. Having an Action Plan that she updated, helped to prioritise safeguarding activities and provided an easy way to share progress – and challenges – with senior managers.

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

One critical part of your organisation’s safeguarding response is to develop your policies and procedures. If you don’t already have them in place, they should be a high priority in your Action Plan. You will still need to prioritise which areas you develop first.

There aren’t any absolutely right or wrong answers here, and all organisations are at different stages of the safeguarding journey.

Your Action Plan should also include ways in which the organisation will help all staff and volunteers to recognise safeguarding concerns and know how to report them. This will include:

• Developing plans to provide training and information to staff that is appropriate to their role.
• Establishing and publicising a reporting process for all staff and volunteers.
• Providing athletes, including children and their parents, with clear information about how they can report concerns.

This training is vitally important to help everyone understand abuse and how they can identify the signs and indicators of abuse and report their concerns.

The starting point for developing training is to conduct a Training Needs Analysis – you will find out more about that next.

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One athletics official stand next to a giant clipboard. The paper on the clipboard is headed Training, with lines of text and three green ticks below the heading.

A Training Needs Analysis (TNA) is a systematic approach that helps you identify:

• What safeguarding knowledge is needed by people in different roles.
• What knowledge they already have.
• What training or other learning activities will give them the knowledge they require.

Let’s now consider how to design and develop the training that staff need to fulfil their safeguarding responsibilities.

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Four steps upwards using blocks. Each block is higher than the previous one. One the first step is a young rugby player in a wheelchair. On the second step is a young gymnast. On the third step is a tennis player. The fourth step is occupied by a skier.

Who needs what level of safeguarding training?

In sport, people often think that safeguarding only applies to coaches and others who have direct contact with children or vulnerable adults. This isn’t true. As you know, everyone in your organisation needs to understand what safeguarding is, why it is important, and what they should do if they have concerns about a child or adult’s welfare.

As a minimum, everyone needs to complete the Safeguarding Essentials course that introduces them to these topics. For some staff – for example, office administrators or others in roles that involve no contact with children or vulnerable adults – this training may be enough. For other staff, the Essentials level of training is a useful introduction to safeguarding but will need to be followed by further training.

What should Essentials training include?

Here is a summary of the contents of the Safeguarding Essentials course:

• What is safeguarding and why is it needed?
• Identifying and managing risk.
• How do beliefs and values influence your approach to safeguarding?
• Codes of conduct.
• How do you find out about safeguarding concerns?
• Why are athletes not likely to speak up?
• Responding to lower-level safeguarding issues.
• How to report concerns in your organisation.

What about training for people who have regular contact with children or vulnerable adults? You consider this next.

Staff or volunteers with responsibilities for – or significant contact with – children and other vulnerable groups need to understand more about safeguarding, to help them consider the risks associated with their role or area of work and how to reduce them.

Coaches, medics, physios, officials, and others whose role involves responsibility for children and other vulnerable groups, need to be clear about the expectations of them and how to identify concerns in their work environment. This also applies to other roles – for example, residential or event staff who may be responsible for children who are away from home.

Intermediate-level training normally has certain core content. Can you think what this would be?

Now let’s move on to think about ‘role or context-specific’ training.

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A young player about to kick a rugby ball.

Some other groups need role or context-specific safeguarding training that is designed to address their specific safeguarding responsibilities and their work context.

For example, Board Members have a more strategic, organisational leadership safeguarding role – so their training needs to address their corporate and legal responsibilities, in particular around allocating appropriate resources for safeguarding, managing safeguarding risks, their accountability for implementing safeguarding arrangements, and their role in creating a safe sport. Your Board Safeguarding Champion may need additional in-depth training for their role.

Some other groups (including Safeguarding Leads, disciplinary, compliance, and Human Resources staff) have important parts to play in processes established to safeguard those involved in sport. They need training that will help them promote a person-centred and trauma-informed approach in practice, clarify expectations of the behaviour of adults, identify and manage risk, and manage safeguarding concerns.

Competition coordinators are involved in risk assessing and planning competitions that may involve many different junior teams, adults, travel, and accommodation – they need to understand how to prioritise safeguarding throughout the process of organising and delivering these competitions, as well as communicating safeguarding expectations to all those taking part.

Each group needs specific training to make sure that they understand why and how safeguarding relates to their situation.

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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.

In addition to identifying gaps and prioritising actions, it is important to collect data on all reported safeguarding cases.

By monitoring the nature of safeguarding cases, trends can be identified that require a more strategic response. For example, case data may indicate an increase in reports involving the misuse of digital technologies, concerns arising within residential settings, or a particular group of athletes.

Any of these should result in a review of the area of concern and may lead to an update of the organisation’s Action Plan, for example, to include updating existing policies, procedures, or training – or the development of entirely new safeguarding arrangements.

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A young female person shouting into a megaphone.

The main learning and messages from this session are:

A safeguarding Action Plan provides a simple way for an organisation to map out and monitor progress across the full range of safeguarding actions. Understanding what safeguarding measures already exist can help you identify where there may be gaps. One critical part of your organisation’s safeguarding response is your policies and procedures. If you don’t already have them in place, they should be a high priority. Your Action Plan should also include ways in which the organisation will help all staff and volunteers to recognise and report safeguarding concerns. A Training Needs Analysis (TNA) is a systematic approach that helps you identify what learning activities will give people in different roles the knowledge they need. Everyone should have basic safeguarding training and some groups, like coaches or Board Members, need additional training for their role. It is important to monitor your plan and your safeguarding cases. That way, trends can be identified that require a more strategic response.

Congratulations on completing Course 2 Safeguarding Practice! You should now have a greater understanding of what safeguarding is and how it can work in your organisation or sport.

To receive your course certificate and digital badge, you need to have completed all the course content and passed the two course quizzes. The second quiz is next.

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Four officials. Referee, coach, umpire, team official. Each one is inside a circle. Between the circles is a box with the word quiz inside it, along with a green tick and a red cross.

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

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.

Now go to the Quiz.