Welcome to the final newsletter of 2015. It has been an exciting year converting the Young People’s Strategy into projects aimed directly at improving the involvement of young people in our sports. We have some equally exciting projects for the year ahead – and will be seeking your help through workshops and forums with young people. More in January!
Happy Christmas from
the Safeguarding Team Kate and Amanda
We hope you have signed up for the Club Youth Awards (CYA) – get in touch if you want more information. We will be sending the information out to registered clubs in the first week of January – so hopefully this won’t get caught up in the Christmas post.
You can sign up anytime, just remember the young people need to have time to work towards achieving their awards. For anyone who has not signed up yet, don't worry just follow the link below and register your club now. Please remember this link is specifically for CCO's
Information webinars from the Child Protection in Sport Unit are available for everyone to take part in. They are usually during the day but can be viewed online at any time from a week after broadcast. Any legislation mentioned is UK based and relevant for Northern Ireland. The policy references for sports are universal across the island of Ireland. We encourage you to log-on and take part.
Previous webinars can also be viewed at the link below. If you didn’t attend the live webinar you will need to register your name and email to view the recording. This is free and only takes a few seconds. https://thecpsu.org.uk/training-events/cpsu-webinars/
Previous topics include: Eating disorders (available after 21st December), Keeping young people safer online, Safeguarding standards, Safeguarding LGBT young people, Grooming etc.
Reasonable Chastisement
The defence of 'reasonable chastisement' for parents smacking their children is now removed under Part 5, Section 28 of the Children First Act 2015.
The introduction of this section abolishes the previous common law defence of ‘reasonable chastisement’ in the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997.
You might remember that this topic comes up in the Safeguarding Level 1 (Basic) workshop when we look at ‘What is a Concern’.
This behaviour was never acceptable within the Club code of conduct, this removes any defence for parents. Just for your information Section 28 is the only section of the Children First Act 2015 that has commenced – we are waiting to hear when the other provisions will come into force.
Ireland becomes the 29th member state, out of 47, in the Council of Europe to achieve full prohibition of corporal punishment.
Vetting Policy
We have updated the Vetting policy for Swim Ireland as there have been a number of changes to the Access NI system and there will be changes to the Garda vetting system.
Our updated policy will be released at the end of January – and we will summarise the relevant points for clubs in the next newsletter.
Reminders
A reminder that the following workshops are available to your club:
