Privileged to be supporting the Sport Welfare Officer Network

In our latest blog, Laura Middleton, provides an update on the Sport Welfare Officer network, highlighting the important opportunity the network has to contribute to the prevention of abuse in sport, as well as the focus on building relationships to ensure the network has a positive, lasting impact.

I’ve been in post with the Active Partnerships National Organisation since January as the Strategic Lead for Welfare and am privileged to be part of the national team appointed to establish and support the Sport Welfare Officer Network.

The Sport Welfare Officers (SWOs) are a new professional workforce, employed by Active Partnerships, working with National Governing Bodies (NGBs) of sport to promote good practice and safe sport for children, young people and adults on a local level.

The workforce has been recruited over the past ten months and is working within the 43 local Active Partnerships across England. Active Partnerships take a place-based approach to promoting sport and physical activity and tackling inequalities and are committed to helping to create safe and positive environments for staff, volunteers and participants.

The project is focused on supporting Club Welfare Officers (CWOs) and those with responsibility for leading safeguarding and welfare in sport at a local level. CWOs are fundamental in protecting and promoting the welfare of children and adults in sport and through the work of the SWOs, we are aiming to increase how supported CWOs feel and their confidence levels. We are also looking to find great examples of good welfare practice across the country, to share these and to connect CWOs together to learn from one another.

Together with Katy Thompson, Programme Manager, during the first six months I focused on supporting the onboarding of SWOs, creating spaces where everyone could connect and develop initial ways of working – to enable the project to get up and running. We’ve spent time with NGB safeguarding teams to better understand the unique differences of their sports, how the project will align with their plans and how best to communicate with their members.

We’ve been fortunate that a strong sense of collaboration has been built from the project’s inception, so leads from local Active Partnerships, NGBs, the Child Protection in Sport Unit, Ann Craft Trust, Sport England and other partners have been incredibly supportive, and have helped to expedite the project.

Many sports readily reached out for the support of Active Partnerships, and SWOs have been quick to engage in a broad range of work including visiting clubs, running local CWO networks, forums, training and events. SWOs have also been getting to know others involved in safeguarding sport at a local level, such as NGB staff and volunteers and statutory services.

In June, SWOs, NGBs and other partners came together for the first time to talk about what the project means to them – both personally and professionally, and to plan what will be delivered across England.

What was clear from conversations, was everyone’s passion for and connection to sport, our shared sense of purpose and our joint commitment to making this project a success.

There was a deep understanding of why this work is so important, and the opportunity this network has to contribute towards the prevention of abuse in sport.

We acknowledged that this is a new cross-sport approach being trialled, alongside the existing work of NGBs and safeguarding partners. There will be many opportunities but also barriers which may need to be overcome, to assist us to work together more closely to achieve our common goals.

Since the away day in June, we have been continuing to work collaboratively on all aspects of the project’s development. Using insight gathered from NGBs, and early conversations with Club Welfare Officer and their clubs, we have developed a Universal Offer which describes what will be delivered with consistency, nationally by the network, to help us to reach the strategic outcomes and impacts. This will be complemented with different, innovative, insight-led local approaches to address the needs of different communities and sports.

We have also led a rigorous tender process, to appoint an independent monitoring, evaluation and learning partner – whose role is to assist Active Partnerships to understand the value of the project, what’s working and what’s not – so we can continually adapt our approach – and be able to articulate clearly what difference has been made. News on the appointed partner will be being shared shortly.

Having now appointed SWOs to cover every major city and region in England, we look forward to being able to share more news about the work of the network in the coming months.

What we hope and envisage is that over time, SWOs will have a unique place in connecting those locally who have a role in safeguarding sport, supporting Club Welfare Officers and in turn their clubs, raising community awareness around sports welfare and enabling culture change within sporting communities.

However, we know that central to our role is being able to build relationships both with, and between organisations, and we welcome support from communities, NGBs and partners to assist the introduction of the network locally. Together we can maximise the potential of this new workforce having a positive, lasting impact on sport.

I would encourage anyone who wants to find out more, to please get in touch locally with SWOs or with the Active Partnerships National Organisation.