New year, new safeguarding blog

The latest entry of Basketball England's safeguarding blog series by our Safeguarding Specialist Amy Riding.

Missed the others? Read them back:

• Club welfare officers - this blog is for you
• Our award-nominated safeguarding learning package
• Get involved with BE's first Safeguarding Awareness Week
• World Mental Health Day toolkit
• Spectator behaviour standards
• Reflecting on Safeguarding Adults Week

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Welcome back! Let me start the new year with a recap of our December 2024 Club Welfare Officer Forum.

 Our second batch of forums ran with discussions across the following topics:

• An introduction to safeguarding regulations, which now sit alongside our safeguarding policy and respective guidance
• Minimum operating standards, where Nick Holloway, our club and volunteers development manager, gave an introduction to the minimum operating standards and looked at its two tiers
• The updated BE safeguarding policy
• And we discussed the new digital method of ID document verification in the DBS process, which has been introduced on the 'Know Your People (KYP)' platform to assist our members in getting identity documents verified for the DBS application process.

The cost to use this is set by KYP at £5.35, with the Post Office and local verifier options still available to use. The process can be completed using a smart phone or computer and the system takes you through the steps. The following are guides will help you with this process:

• DBS Digital Identity Process Guide
• DBS Digital Identity Video Guide 

Spectator behaviour received a recap and we were joined by sports welfare officers. They shared with us the work they have been doing with sports clubs in their local areas and provided an insight into the resources they could provide for our clubs, including:

• Assistance with meeting the minimum club operating standards
• Updating policies and procedures
• Helping clubs with their safeguarding plans (which could assist them with meeting the higher tier within the minimum club operating standards)
• And providing face-to-face support and talking through safeguarding/welfare practice

Please see the Sport Welfare Officer Network for more information and for contact details of your local Sport Welfare Officer.

Lastly, the nomination window for the 2024 Basketball England Awards is open until 12:00am, 10 January 2024. 

This year, five new awards have been introduced, including Club Welfare Officer of the Year.

We advocated for this award to be introduced given the selfless dedication of our volunteers, who undertake this role to deliver crucial work to make our sport safer.

Make your nomination via the red button below. 

Our next Club Welfare Officer forum will be held during the week commencing 24 March 2025.

Further detail and registration information will be sent out in due course.

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