News

15/11/2021 00:00, In Blog /

Welsh Athletics wants to UNITE our community to ensure that everyone is valued and supported within our sport. The safety and welfare of our athletes, volunteers, coaches, officials and our wider athletics family is important to us and we are proud to be supporting this year’s National Safeguarding Adults Week and the Anti Bullying Alliance Anti Bullying Week, to help raise awareness and support during the week of 15th – 21st November.

During this week we will be highlighting various resources and information available to our community to help support the welfare of everyone involved in Athletics in Wales. We encourage our members and wider athletics family to UNITE to ensure that everyone is valued and supported within our sport.

For more information on how you can support the week, please visit the respective websites National Safeguarding Adults Week and Anti Bullying Alliance Anti Bullying Week for specific resources and information.

WHO TO CONTACT IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS OR CONCERNS:
IF YOUR CONCERN IS URGENT…

Please contact the police by dialing 999 or 101 as well as notifying the Local Authority Designated Officer (contact details on individual Unitary Authority websites (Social Services).

Our Chief Executive Officer is currently fulfilling the role of Lead Safeguarding Officer, if you have any queries or would like to discuss any issue related to child protection, please contact him via e-mail at safeguardingandwelfare@welshathletics.org or by telephone on 07864 613666 or you can submit a concern via the referral platform.

For Athletes

For Club Welfare Officers & Clubs

There is lots of useful information and resources on the Welsh Athletics Safeguarding & Welfare pages. If you would like further support in your Club Welfare Officer role you can contact your local regional welfare officer or find further information here.

The Ann Craft Trust also have various training opportunities happening during the week, these can be accessed via Ann Craft or here.

Here’s a few things you can do within your club:
Highlight who your welfare officers are and how to contact them
Reinforce any codes of practice/club guidelines with your membership
Raise awareness via your club social media platforms
Share any resources with your membership and signpost places to get further support

For Coaches

For volunteers

If you would like to upskill in this area or are interested to learn more there are specific workshops being held across the week:
Volunteer Coordinator Resources (welshathletics.org)

Additional Resources

We want to support you as much as we can and have pulled together a useful list of resources and contacts below:
Ann Craft Trust
Anti Bullying Alliance
Welsh Athletics Safeguarding & Welfare website (which also includes further signposting and information)
Supporting Positive Mental Health in your Club/Group
Non perfect parent online workshop series 

Following a recent Junior Athlete Voice meeting, Alice (JAV representative) wanted to make sure peers in her club knew where to go if they wanted to speak to someone. She told us what she set up at the club to help increase awareness:

"The club set up welfare zoom meetings to ensure everyone knew the welfare team and encourage all to speak up! This had a great turnout and had a massively positive impact on all that attended. We're still working to deliver monthly meetings on various topics."