This week, the NSPCC has launched ‘Keeping Your Child Safe in Sport week’. The campaign, previously known as ‘Parents in Sport week’, will run year-round with an annual focus week at the start of October. During the focus week, parents, sports clubs and bodies, and NSPCC ambassadors will be brought together to help parents to keep children safe in sports.

The campaign aims to support and provide information to parents, carers and sports providers to keep children safe in sports environments with a multitude of free resources online.

If you’re a parent, you can make a difference with the campaign by help to spread the word about keeping children safe in sport and encourage other fellow parents to get involved.

Here’s how parents can help support this year’s campaign.

• Take a look at the resources developed by CPSU and the NSPCC in the parents’ hub (https://thecpsu.org.uk/parents/)
• Check out the updated e-learning course and learn how to keep your child safe

­­­­­­­­As part of the campaign to keep children safe in sport, the CPSU (Child Protection in Sport Unit) have been carrying out insight work to highlight areas of improvement in safeguarding resources for sports.

Recently, the NSPCC recruited volunteers to support the insight work that is taking place which includes reviewing the websites of sports organisations. The findings are then reviewed against the safeguarding criteria which address the main safeguarding areas of the website, such as accessibility to safeguarding information, safeguarding contacts and policies.

Two volunteers with no connection to the sport they are reviewing, independently complete a ‘mystery shopper’ style review of the website, highlighting positives and negatives regarding the safeguarding information available, this is then reported back to the CPSU.

Last month, The British Judo Association were informed that the insight work had been carried out on the British Judo website. The Association are pleased to share that the results of the review were very positive with all of the NSPCC’s safeguarding online criteria being met.

Michelle North, Service Head of the Child Protection in Sport Unit, commented on the importance of accessible safeguarding information for all individuals involved in sports;

“It is really important that sports organisations have accessible information for everyone including parents, coaches and young people themselves.  If someone is worried about something, they should be able to find who to talk to about it with ease.  There is a lot of work that goes on in the background to ensure there are processes and procedures in place but fundamentally if people don’t know about it, then it has limited use. Safeguarding should be transparent, publicised and celebrated, to create a culture when all stakeholders feel confident to raise concerns.”

Please visit the CPSU website for more information on how you can keep your child safe in sport.

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