Safeguarding, Child Protection and Abuse in Sport

International Perspectives in Research, Policy and Practice

Melanie Lang, Mike Hartill, Melanie Lang, Mike Hartill

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415829793
• eBook ISBN: 9781134118939
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The safeguarding of children and young people participating in sport has become an increasingly prominent concern in policy-making and research communities around the world. Major organisations such as the IOC and UNICEF now officially recognize that children in sport can be at risk of exploitation and abuse, and this concern has led to the emergence of new initiatives and policies aimed at protecting vulnerable young people and athletes. This book is the first to comprehensively review contemporary developments in child protection and safeguarding in sport on a global level.

The book is divided into two parts. Part One critically analyses current child protection and safeguarding policy and practice in sport across a range of countries, including the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, China and Germany, providing a global context for current policy and practice. This represents the most comprehensive review to date of the landscape of child protection and safeguarding in sport and provides a starting point for critical international comparisons. Part Two explores a range of issues related to child protection and safeguarding in sport, including many not covered in previous books, such as emotional abuse, injury and over-training. While in many instances the impetus for policy in this area has arisen from concerns about sexual abuse, the second part of this book therefore opens up a broader, more holistic approach to child and athlete welfare.

By bringing together many of the leading researchers working in child and athlete protection in sport from around the world, this book is important reading for all advanced students, researchers, policy-makers or practitioners working in youth sport, physical education, sports coaching, coach education or child protection.

Part I

Global perspectives

1 Safeguarding and child protection in sport in England

Melanie Lang and Mike Hartill

When British Olympic swimming coach Paul Hickson was convicted in 1995 of the rape and sexual assault of young athletes under his care, the Amateur Swimming Association, like most other English sports organizations, had no strategy for safeguarding and protecting athletes from abuse. The Hickson case drew national attention to sexual abuse in sport, although sports organizations initially denied such abuse was widespread and branded Hickson ‘a bad apple’, an aberration that had nothing to do with the culture of sport. Further revelations of child sexual abuse in British sport surfaced in the late 1990s, resulting in intense media scrutiny and an emerging ‘moral panic’ around child sexual abuse in sport that arguably continues to shape safeguarding policies to this day. In the 20 years since Hickson’s conviction, British sport has been positioned as a world leader in athlete welfare, with developments from within and outside sport shaping the governance and practice of sport. This chapter highlights the background to these developments and discusses current strategies in place to safeguard and protect children and young people in sport in England.

Safeguarding, child protection and athlete welfare

Legislation forms the framework for children’s welfare in the United Kingdom (UK). However, because the laws and structure in each of the home nations of the UK varies, this chapter focuses on the situation in sport in England, where a child is defined as under age 18 (Department for Children, School and Families 2010). The child welfare system in England is a product of its history, with developments predominantly emerging in reaction to high-profile cases of abuse, often sexual abuse, and there is no single piece of legislation that covers child welfare in England. The framework for the current system was established with The Children Act 1989 (Department of Health 1989) and its related guidance, particularly Working Together to Safeguard Children (Department for Children, School and Families 2010; Department for Education 2013; Department of Health and Social Security 1998). These set out how children should be protected from ‘significant harm’, defined as ill-treatment, including sexual abuse and non-physical forms of ill-treatment, or the impairment of physical or mental health, or of physical, intellectual, emotional, social or behavioural development (Department for Children, School and Families 2010). Importantly, the Act applies only to local authorities and the courts; all other organizations, including sport, are exempt from its requirements.

The requirements of the Children Act 1989 encapsulate the term ‘child protection’ (Parton 2001), which is used to collectively represent ‘the activity that is undertaken to protect specific children who are suffering, or are likely to suffer, significant harm’ (Department for Children, School and Families 2010: 35). The focus of child protection is specifically on protecting children from ‘significant harm’, in other words providing predominantly reactive services to protect children from abuse; the four sub-categories of child abuse are: sexual, physical and emotional abuse plus neglect (Department of Health and Social Security 1988).

In 2000 there was a shift towards more preventative services for all children, signalled in the document Every Child Matters (Chief Secretary to the Treasury 2003) and its related legislation the Children Act 2004 (Department for Education and Skills 2004), by the term ‘safeguarding’, meaning:

… the process of protecting children from abuse or neglect, preventing impairment of their health and development, and ensuring they are growing up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care that enables children to have optimum life chances and enter adulthood successfully.

(Department for Children, School and Families 2010: 27)

Rather than focusing only on protecting children from abuse, this new safeguarding agenda is more holistic and broad-ranging in its remit. It covers all issues that have the potential to disrupt a child’s health and development, regardless of their cause, leading to criticisms that the role of the state is becoming broader, more interventionist and regulatory, resulting in the emergence of a ‘preventive-surveillance state’ (Parton 2008: 166).

The Children Act 2004 also made clear that all sectors of society, including sport, are responsible for safeguarding children. For example, sports organizations are urged to follow ‘appropriate codes of practice for staff, particularly sports coaches’ (Department for Children, School and Families 2010: 49), including creating child protection officers and establishing procedures for reporting child welfare concerns. Indeed, the most recent guidance reiterates that voluntary and private sector organizations, including those in sport, should have a range of safeguarding measures in place and that staff must be aware of how to report concerns (Department for Education 2013).

Nevertheless, while recent government policies have tended to be framed around ‘safeguarding children’ (Parton 2006), recent high-profile cases of child abuse in England – the physical abuse case involving Baby P,¹ the sex abuse scandal involving the Catholic Church,² historic sexual abuse allegations against celebrity Sir Jimmy Savile³ and allegations of sexual abuse in some of the country’s most successful music schools⁴ – have again put the term ‘child protection’ at the core of governmental concerns. Currently, then, the terms ‘safeguarding’ and ‘child protection’ are often used alongside one another, and while there is an acknowledged interest in proactively promoting children’s welfare and positive development (safeguarding), the central tenet of legislation remains on protecting children from harm caused by abuse, predominantly sexual abuse (child protection) (Parton 2012).

A further important development in child welfare came in an amendment to the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which introduced the offence of abuse of trust. While the age of consent for sexual relations in England is 16, this Act made it a criminal offence ‘for a person aged 18 or over to engage in sexual activity with, or directed towards, a person under that age if he is in a position of trust in relation to that person’ (Home Office 1999). The law defines specific roles and settings where even apparently consensual sexual activity between a young person aged 16 or 17 and those in positions of trust, responsibility or authority constitutes a criminal offence. Crucially for sport, while settings such as educational institutions, residential care homes, hospitals and youth offender institutions are all named, the definition of ‘position of trust’ excludes roles and settings in sport, although coaches would be covered by this legislation if they were employed by and working within a school (CPSU 2011). However, as there is currently no offence of abuse of trust legislation specifically relating to sport, the only way sports governing bodies can deal with this issue is as a poor practice disciplinary matter.

Safeguarding and child protection developments in sport

Until the late 1990s, sports organizations in England were excluded from child welfare legislation, in part because the traditional autonomy of the sports sector made the government reluctant to intervene (Houlihan 1997). This has resulted in ‘a legacy of traditionalism and resistance to change’ (Brackenridge 2001: 10), including making sport slower than other institutions to adopt social reforms for child welfare. The Hickson case was a wake-up call for sport. The case cost the Amateur Swimming Association (ASA) around £1 million in lost sponsorship (Bringer 2002) and prompted a ‘moral panic’ (Cohen 1972) around child sexual abuse in sport that drove national governing bodies (NGBs) and external sports agencies to act. There was considerable resistance from inside sport, however, with NGBs initially denying abuse in sport was a significant issue (Boocock 2012). Rather than understanding abuse as facilitated and hidden by the cultural norms of sport (Brackenridge 2001), officials insisted it was caused by the incursion into sport by predatory paedophiles intent on gaining access to children. Tellingly, this is despite Hickson himself not matching this profile – Hickson was a former competitive swimmer, had moved into coaching when his swimming career ended and was a well-qualified and respected coach with a wife and child (Williams 2003).

Following Hickson’s arrest, a series of other cases of child athletes being sexually abused by their coaches emerged in football, gymnastics, karate, diving and horse riding. In response, and following pressure from some sport stakeholders – sports development officers, athletes’ parents, researchers – in 2000 Sport England, the agency responsible for funding affiliated NGBs, teamed up with the UK’s largest children’s charity, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), to convene a Child Protection in Sport Task Force. The group produced an action plan for child protection in sport and led to the creation in 2001 of the Child Protection in Sport Unit (CPSU), the first government-backed agency with responsibility for safeguarding and child protection in sport. The CPSU began implementing the action plan through the development of sports-related resources and offering NGBs advice, training and support on welfare issues from child protection procedures to whistleblowing, codes of conduct and inclusion. The same year a Sport England audit revealed serious gaps in NGBs’ systems for dealing with abuse cases (CPSU 2010). To address this, Sport England began linking NGB funding to the implementation of child protection policies and by 2002 all state-funded NGBs had such a policy in place (Boocock 2002). This is clearly a positive step for protecting children in sport and research in football, rugby league and swimming suggests most members welcome the introduction of such policies although there is some doubt about the impact in practice (Hartill and Prescott 2007; Independent Football Commission 2005; Lang 2009). Importantly, however, these requirements are only for NGBs funded by Sport England, of which there are currently around 125 (Sport England 2013b); for other NGBs there are no such requirements and it is unknown what, if any, measures they have in place to safeguard the welfare of their young participants.

The Standards

In 2003 the CPSU introduced a set of standards for child protection for NGBs to work towards as a condition of funding, called the Standards for Safeguarding and Protecting Children in Sport (CPSU 2003, 2006a), and shortly after published a national strategy for safeguarding and child protection in sport (CPSU 2006b). The Standards, which reflect requirements in the Children Acts 1989 and 2004, focus on protecting children from, and managing cases of, abuse, but they also cover broader safeguarding concerns, for example encouraging strategies to promote equity (CPSU 2006a). Crucially, the efficacy of this development has yet to be explored. According to the CPSU, 85 of 95 publicly funded sports agencies have achieved the Advanced Level of the Standards. However, some NGBs are thought to have closed their junior sections or opted to forgo funding rather than comply (Brackenridge 2008).

Amongst other things, the Standards require NGBs to have designated staff in charge of safeguarding and child protection. Clubs have a Club Welfare Officer (CWO) (sometimes known as the Club Protection Officer) and NGBs have a national safeguarding lead officer (LO), who champions safeguarding and child protection and manages cases of abuse referred to them from clubs. Those in these roles are crucial to children’s welfare in sport, yet many lack expertise in child welfare issues, and some have multiple responsibilities, acting as CWO or LO while also having other duties. To support NGBs in managing safeguarding and child protection concerns, in 2013 an independent National Safeguarding Panel for Sport (NSP) was established. The NSP, which includes solicitors and professionals from social work and the police, conducts safeguarding and abuse investigations for NGBs and acts as an arbitrator in serious safeguarding disciplinary cases (CPSU 2013).

While Sport England has provided the CPSU with £1 million in funding over two years to develop and embed safeguarding and child protection in sport (Sport England 2013a), NGBs are not required to set aside a minimum amount for this in the way they do for other operating costs, such as coaching. Consequently, NGBs have different budgets for safeguarding and child protection, dependent on their size and, in some cases, the value attributed to the area by senior management. Many LOs and CWOs, especially those in smaller NGBs, are volunteers, which raises questions about the efficacy of the roles and the value placed on safeguarding among NGB senior staff. Meanwhile, CWOs say other staff do not take their role seriously and that safeguarding and child protection is not prioritized in clubs and, in some instances, not publicized to club members (Hartill and Prescott 2007; Lang 2009). In addition, some NGBs struggle to find people to take on CWO and LO roles, perhaps due to the specialist nature of the role and the workload involved.

The Standards also introduced criminal background checks for individuals working with children in sport, bringing sport in line with the Police Act 1997 which required criminal history checks on anyone working with vulnerable groups, including children. Checks are processed through the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) (introduced in 2013 to replace the Criminal Records Bureau) and search the applicant’s spent and unspent convictions as well as serious cautions, reprimands and final warnings. Whilst the DBS is very new, background checking in one form or another has been in place since 2002, despite criticisms that it fails to identify first-time offenders and does not prevent future offending; a DBS check, for example, would not have flagged Paul Hickson as a potential abuser. There is also anecdotal evidence that some sports clubs are not vetting staff as required (see for example Margeson 2012) and concern that background vetting deters volunteers and puts financial and resource pressure on sports clubs (Kay et al. 2008).

Education forms another key strand of the CPSU Standards. All sports staff must undergo safeguarding and child protection awareness training every three years. The CPSU, some NGBs and sports coaching organizations (such as sports coach UK) offer their own face-to-face safeguarding and protecting children workshops, with refresher courses often taking place online. However, there is a trend for some NGBs to move such training online to cut costs, in some cases for all members (as with, for example, the British Canoe Union) and in other cases only for members who do not have close contact with children (as with, for example, Badminton England and England Hockey). While some coaches complain attendance at such courses is both expensive and time consuming, especially for volunteers not wanting a career in coaching (Lang 2009), education is recognized as the most efficient way of enacting change. The concern about moving safeguarding and child protection training wholly online is that this approach is less engaging (Schmeeckle 2003) and may make it easier for stereotypical views about chil...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: what is safeguarding in sport?
• Part I Global perspectives
• 1 Safeguarding and child protection in sport in England
• 2 Safeguarding children and young people in Danish sport
• 3 Preventing child maltreatment and transgressive behaviour in Flemish sport
• 4 (Sexual) intimidation in sport in the Netherlands
• 5 Child protection in German sport
• 6 Safeguarding and child protection in sport in two Southern European countries: Greece and the Republic of Cyprus
• 7 Child protection and welfare in Spanish sport
• 8 Safeguarding children from violence and abuse in Slovenian sport
• 9 Protecting children from abuse and exploitation in South African sports
• 10 Athlete welfare and protection policy development in the USA
• 11 Athlete welfare and safeguarding in sport in Canada
• 12 Child safety and wellbeing in Australian sport
• 13 The protection of young athletes in China: policy and practice
• 14 Who safeguards the child in Japanese sports?
• Part II Developing fields of enquiry
• 15 Safeguarding athletes from emotional abuse
• 16 Safeguarding the welfare of disabled people in sport: some policy issues and considerations
• 17 Physical training as a potential form of abuse
• 18 Safeguarding, injuries and athlete choice
• 19 Evaluation in safeguarding and child protection in sport
• Conclusion
• Index