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Child protection is a major consideration in today’s sporting world and at Edinburgh Leisure we want to make sure that any activity going on within our centres takes place in a fun and child friendly environment. Club’s often find child protection a daunting area but child protection done well actually requires little more than organised administration, vigilance and a common sense approach in a Club session. This mentality then needs to be translated into policies and procedures so children, coaches and parents alike are clear what is and is not acceptable.

While many Clubs fully believe in the spirit and practice good child protection in their sessions they often lack the time and/or the confidence to translate this into policies and procedures. For this reason Edinburgh Leisure, in partnership with the Child Protection in Sport unit for Scotland, are delivering the following courses and have created the following 6 child protection documents demonstrating good practice and applicable to any sport:

Useful documents

• Child Protection Policy

• Code of Conduct

• Procedure for the Recruitment of those Working with Children

• Procedure for Responding to Concerns of Child Abuse

• Disciplinary Procedures for Dealing with Allegations of Abuse (coming soon)

• Procedure for Responding to Concerns about Misconduct

These documents are not definitive and Clubs are asked to consider their sport specific environments but these should provide a solid foundation.

A new extended let agreement is being phased in and by the end of 2008 all of Edinburgh Leisure’s Clubs, in signing their let agreement form will also be committing themselves to follow the practice set out in these documents. Edinburgh Leisure believes that in doing this it is providing a valued service to its Clubs as well as members of the public and ultimately this service will:

1. enable Clubs to focus on delivering their sport to children rather than writing policies and procedures;

2. allow parents to have the peace of mind in knowing that a Club in an Edinburgh Leisure facility has signed up to these policies and procedures;

…and most importantly…

3. allow our children to play sport in a fun and safe environment.