The 7th – 11th October is Keeping Children Safe in Sport Week, in partnership with the Child Protection in Sport Unit as part of the NSPCC. With so much focus this week on what tangible actions parents, clubs and governing bodies can take to protect our young people in sporting environments, this blog focuses on what we're doing here at Active Oxfordshire.

In 2023, Sport England funded a Sport Welfare Officer Network at each Active Partnership. Active Oxfordshire appointed its Safeguarding and Welfare Manager, Heidi Yates, in December 2023, with the aim of supporting clubs with the development of their best practice and with providing an effective safeguarding culture.

Since being in the role, Heidi has worked with multiple sports clubs, being a local point of contact for clubs, signposting to them to advice and guidance, creating awareness of safeguarding at local and national events, connecting safeguarding officers across the county and beyond, and supporting clubs to create safe cultures.

Here are some recent events which we've been involved with to cultivate safe sports cultures for Oxfordshire's young people.

Connecting club welfare officers across Oxfordshire and beyond – Club Welfare Officer Forums

In partnership with Get Berkshire Active and LEAP, Active Oxfordshire has hosted two online Club Welfare Officer forums. The purpose of the forums is to create a space to engage with club welfare officers from across the counties, to connect them with the Sport Welfare Officer Network, provide useful information and practical advice, and allow them to ask any questions about safeguarding within their clubs and organisations.

65 club representatives registered for the sessions, and we were joined by coaches and safeguarding officers from all over Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and Buckinghamshire, covering a wide range of sports including running, athletics, football, tennis, cricket, trampolining, netball, and gymnastics clubs.

Sharing lived experiences and creating safer cultures in sport – NWG Voice in Sport launch event

Sport England hosted a launch event for their new set of support resources, Voices in Sport. The initiative was born out of the Whyte Review, and allowed Sport England to gather insight from lived experience of survivors, to share with the safeguarding network and to inform necessary changes within safeguarding cultures in sport.

Voices in Sport and the resources and knowledge shared at the event were developed with the input of diverse voices, educating and raising awareness of the long-term impacts of abuse. The stories shared aimed to support those in positions of trust and authority in sport to notice signs of the effects of abuse and how to address these and support those club members.

Different speakers shared their extremely moving and personal accounts of abuse and the actions they are taking to prevent those experiences from happening to other children and young people now.

We will then take those learnings to share with the Sport Welfare Officer Network across the county, supporting clubs to implement any changes and create a safe space for their club members.

Awareness with no action would mean we make very limited progress in cultivating safe sporting environments. To find out more about what you can do, we are hosting two online information sessions on Monday October 21st , one at 12:30-1:30pm, the other 6-7pm. These sessions are aimed at parents and carers. We'll bring together the latest insight, additional speakers, our latest training offer, and useful signposting.

Sign up for the sessions here:
Afternoon session (12:30 - 1:30pm) - register here.
Evening session (6-7pm) - register here.

You can find safeguarding information and resources here: https://www.activeoxfordshire.org/safeguarding.

If you have any questions or would like support with safeguarding at your organisations, please reach out to Heidi: heidiyates@activeoxfordshire.org.