Understand the steps to doing safeguarding well. The National Council for Voluntary Organisations have written a guide that includes policies and procedures, roles and responsibilities, reporting and more.

For more information please visit; NCVO Safeguarding; Steps to a Safer Organisation

Safeguarding should be at the forefront of planning and delivering any virtual activity in the same way as it would be for a face-to-face event.

There are a number of things that should be considered:

• Is the activity appropriate - for the adults or the young person's age, ability and physicality?
• Safe Recruitment
• Codes of Conduct
• Training - including safeguarding in a virtual world
• Undertake a risk assessment
• Consent from parents to take part as would be the case for a face-to-face event
• How to manage concerns - pre, during or post activity.

• There should not be 1:1 interaction online between an adult and a young person.
• No contact online between adults and children outside of the activity.
• More than one adult belonging to the delivery organisation should be fully aware of the activity and how it is being run with an option to monitor.
• Organisations welfare/safeguarding leads should be aware of the event, who is delivering, what platform and which group of young people are involved.
• Provide links to parents that provide security settings.

When working with children, there's lots of things to remember, but when it comes to sun protection, there's only five!

The Five Rules of Sun Protection (Please watch the video - it is only 1 minute long)

In December 2020, Working together to safeguard children was updated. The key changes and what this means for sport and physical activity organisations can be found here.

The update includes changes to information sharing, the homelessness duty and domestic abuse. The following areas were added or amended.

• Assessment of risk outside the home
• Mental health concerns
• Domestic abuse
• Criminal exploitation
• Information sharing
• Homelessness duty

A new animation launched by the NSPCC Child Protection in Sport Unit (CPSU) is helping more people to understand what child protection and safeguarding mean in a sports setting. The video, which is two and a half minutes long, looks more in depth at how children and young people can be further protected beyond their time at training sessions. It takes a closer look at contextual safeguarding and how, by thinking about where young people practice skills in their spare time, how they travel to practice or where they go afterwards, we can help to make them even safer.