Missed the first blog? Read it back.
Safeguarding is one of the key principles of this code - and we must also meet the required standards set by the Child Protection in Sport Unit on an ongoing basis.
In recent history the world of sport has been rocked by significant safeguarding allegations, such as those uncovered by the Whyte Review in British Gymnastics. Basketball England wants to respond to these challenges by ensuring that all of our workforce, voluntary or otherwise, are fully supported to keep our sport safe, fun and inclusive.
And so, this year we launched our new safeguarding learning package, which includes a Safeguarding course and a Club Welfare Officer course.
The overall aim when developing the package was to ensure that our workforce is fully supported to deal with any safeguarding concerns or challenges that they may face.
We wanted our learners to engage with the courses in a meaningful way, which is why both courses are basketball specific.
We have collaborated with a fantastic business partner to develop the material. This collaboration has brought educational material that every person in a position of trust can engage with irrespective of whether they are part of a small local club or part of our elite pathway programmes.
In fact, Learning Nexus - the platform we use for our digital learning and courses - has put forward our new package of courses for a Learning Technologies award.
They believe that the course, content and technology is of the highest quality and have put it forward as a collaborative piece of work to be judged. Fingers crossed!
The basketball community is hugely diverse.
A key requirement for the learning was that it must be accessible to every single member.
That means that everyone aged 18 and upwards should be able to access the learning no matter what device they use or how tech-savvy they are. We believe our learning delivers this.
We tested our package using a near final build with a range of people across the wider organisation. The feedback was highly constructive and complimentary. This included very experienced welfare staff, social workers and regional managers with many years of safeguarding experience.
Feedback since the launch has been fantastic too, with coaches saying that it really makes them look at their own practice from a whole new perspective.
What does the future hold? Well, the next steps are to develop a basketball specific safeguarding adults course, with the potential to follow up with learning for junior players and their parents, providing information on how to keep themselves safe in sport.
Together we can keep our community safe.
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