BJA Safeguarding Update – February 2020

British Judo takes Safeguarding very seriously and has a range of policies and procedures designed to support each and every member of the Association.

Most of you will be aware that these are contained in SafeLandings which can be found here.

We realise, of course, that for all the central policies we have, they are only as good as how safeguarding is delivered at club level and for that, we mostly have Club Welfare Officers to thank as they are our eyes and ears at our clubs. It was great to meet some of them at our recent CWO Conference, held in conjunction with England Boxing, when I was able to personally thank them and I would like to extend those thanks to all CWOs. You do a fantastic job and I am here whenever you would like to discuss any issues. We are hoping to make the Conference either an annual or bi-annual event and will look at holding it in different areas to make it easier to get to.

Currently it is not compulsory for clubs to have a CWO but we do our best to encourage clubs to appoint one. That approach will continue for now but it is likely that it will become a compulsory position for all new clubs registering in the forthcoming year and for all clubs in the next 3 years. I will be writing to all clubs that have junior members but no registered CWO in the coming weeks to explain this further.

At an organisational level, the BJA conducts an annual Safeguarding Self Assessment which we use to formulate an Action Plan for the forthcoming year. Our inspection and action plan are then ratified each year by the Children Protection in Sport Unit (CPSU). We use the CPSU Assessment Tool to do this and that can be found here.

The tool is designed for National Governing Bodies but you might like to try it at club level if you think it will help? Please let me know if you would like any assistance and let me know how you get on? The CPSU website has a number of useful tools that are aimed at club level and I think that this page has many useful links. Again, please get in touch if you need some assistance implementing anything.

Keith Eldridge
keith.eldridge@britishjudo.org.uk
BJA Safeguarding Manager
February 2020