Safeguarding in Sport

Trusted by some of the biggest names in Sport.
We are proud to support a wide range of sporting bodies, from some of the biggest names in world football to charitable foundations, professional leagues, amateur teams and NGBs in sports as diverse as Table Tennis, athletics and Motorsport.

Recent high-profile news stories have shown that mental health issues can affect athletes at all levels and have highlighted the link between good mental health and strong sporting performances.
In addition to mental health issues, the number and range of safeguarding concerns now being handled by safeguarding practitioners has grown exponentially to include issues such as body dysmorphia, substance misuse, overtraining, eating disorders and e-safety issues.
This creates an enormous responsibility for coaches, team managers, safeguarding leads and volunteers to support individuals and manage what can be extremely challenging issues. Sadly, these issues can have detrimental, long-term effects for those involved and, when poorly managed, can result in other damaging consequences for a club's reputation and the wider wellbeing of its staff and volunteers.

Total Safeguarding
We believe that successfully achieving high standards of professional safeguarding practice is founded on eight core principles that come together to create Total Safeguarding:
- Strong governance, leadership and management
- A clear focus on harm prevention and reduction
- Efficient recording and case management of concerns
- Effective team working within and between individuals and organisations
- Managing and sharing information securely, lawfully, and pro-actively
- Securing professional and emotional support for your people, your teams and yourself
- Being able to see the rich picture – understanding your data and developing insight
- Learning lessons from your own professional practice and that of others.
The essential step to Total Safeguarding is to combine the practice of safeguarding with the very best technology - each is necessary, individually they are unlikely to meet the current safeguarding challenge. Together we can create everything you need for yours to be a world-class safeguarding organisation – one that protects children and adults and supports them to have the best outcomes in learning, in work and in life.
Solutions
Our suite of safeguarding solutions to support the Sports sector is ever-growing, so we can help with your safeguarding processes in a number of ways.
MyConcern, is our award-winning platform that offers a secure, centralised system for the management of all categories of safeguarding, child protection, and pastoral concern. Sentry, is our purpose-built safer recruitment and personal vetting solution that can be customised to your unique needs and acts as your single central record and Confide, our solution for managing allegations and 'low-level' concerns about staff, sensitively and securely.
Our award-winning software provides a secure system for the recording and management of the full range of concerns that sports teams and organisations may be presented with. All staff can be given access to record their concerns from any web-enabled device, or our mobile companion app, while safeguarding officers can triage cases, view chronologies, and analyse reporting trends.
With MyConcern you can:
- Centralise the recording of safeguarding and welfare concerns - no need to rely on paper-based records anymore.
- Take a proactive approach to safeguarding your athletes - a single source of truth allows you to spot patterns and identify opportunities for early intervention.
- Fortify your whole-team safeguarding culture - with different levels of access, all staff and volunteers can quickly and easily contribute to the wellbeing of any individual.
- Give staff peace of mind that their concerns have been recorded
- Gain visibility of the safeguarding picture across your organisation - with actionable insights and the ability to demonstrate the impact of your provisions to NGB's, parents or other stakeholders
We believe that effective safeguarding starts with Safer Recruitment, so we designed Sentryto guide you through the process - ensuring no critical check is missed. Gone are the days where records of right to work checks, first aid qualifications, references, and more can be kept in paper or excel files.
Sentry is a purpose-built, secure system that can be customised for the unique roles and responsibilities within your organisation and supports you when following best practice guidance.
Sentry at a glance:
- Quick reference dashboards to easily monitor status and outstanding recruitment checks
- Automated workflows throughout the system ensure no critical steps are missed
- Minimises risk and facilitates a joined-up safeguarding approach
- Enables compliance with international safer recruitment standards and guidance from bodies such as COBIS, BSME and ECIS.
- Customisable checks and roles to tailor Sentry to the way your organisation works
- Expiry dates keep track of time-sensitive checks and notify when renewals are needed
- Custom deadline dates show when checks must be completed or actioned
Clarity is a powerful reporting tool Suitable for Governing Bodies, Leagues and multi-site organisations. Paired with MyConcern to provide high-level, anonymised reporting, Clarity enables you to detect risks, spot trends and track progress across any number of individual clubs, sites or teams.
Clarity helps senior safeguarding professionals working across multiple locations to identify actionable insights, inform decision making and uncover opportunities for training and CPD, helping to ensure that your wider organisation's safeguarding responsibilities are met.
Clarity+ offers additional functionality for those organisations seeking to implement a higher level of consistency with centralised set up and broadcast message functionality.
Despite all efforts to recruit safely, there will be occasions when there are allegations that meet the harm threshold or low-level concerns are made against adults that are working and/or volunteering in your organisation. All clubs which have employees or volunteers working with children should therefore have clear and accessible policies and procedures in place.
Clarity is our electronic system for recording and case-managing allegations and concerns against adults who are working or volunteering in your organisation. The system enables you to easily record concerns in a secure environment, to record all aspects of the investigation, upload relevant documents and produce accurate reports on trend data. Clarity also allows you to restrict access to the system so you can be reassured that the data remains confidential and is only available to users with the appropriate permissions.
Explore our solutions in detail:
For Concerns about Children and Young Adults
Easy-to-use, centralised, secure record-keeping and case management for all types of safeguarding concerns
Find out moreFor Safer Recruitment
A safer recruitment and personnel vetting tool that acts as your Single Central Record. Designed to guide you through the recruitment process and to ensure that no check is missed
Find out moreFor Multi-establishment Reporting
A powerful reporting tool designed exclusively for multi-establishment safeguarding. Paired with MyConcern and Confide to provide high-level, anonymised reporting across groups of establishments
Find out moreFor Allegations Against Staff
One of the most sensitive issues facing any leader is how to handle serious allegations about their staff. Confide is the answer
Find out moreYou May Also Be Interested In:

Safer Recruitment In Sport - Safeguarding Clubs, Coaches and Athletes
This webinar discussed the issue of Safer Recruitment currently facing sports clubs of all levels. Our expert panel looked at some of the key issues that clubs and coaches must consider when protecting their players, athletes or participants.

Tackling Sexual Abuse and Whistleblowing in Sports
We hosted a panel discussion on the issues of safeguarding in sports, particularly tackling sexual abuse and whistleblowing in the sports sector, highlighting the key issues in identifying abuse and the problems around reporting on it.

Keeping children safe during community activities, after-school clubs and tuition
Download our free handbook on this non-statutory guidance from the Department for Education aiming to help providers of out-of-school settings understand best practice for creating a safe environment for the children and young people in their care.

Independent Review into Child Sexual Abuse in Football
A recent Independent review led by Clive Sheldon QC, has identified generations of young footballers who have suffered abuse due to an absence of child protection and safeguarding policies and procedures. All of us at The Safeguarding Company have been saddened by the findings of the 700+ page report, identifying abuse between 1970 to 2005.