Safeguarding and Integrity update – February 2023

Safeguarding & Integrity Team & Contacts Update

As has been previously communicated the old Governance & Welfare team has been restructured, and now has a clear and renewed focus as the Safeguarding & Integrity Team.

To complete the team Sally Wan joins British Rowing as Lead Safeguarding Officer with considerable experience from safeguarding roles in football at both grassroots and elite level, including most recently as Head of Safeguarding at Leicester City Football Club.

Please note the LSO@ email address is being retired and replaced with [email protected].

• Details of the team and key contacts can be found here.
• To report a concern visit our report a concern page here.

Sport England/UK Sport Policy Response to Whyte Review

In response to the Whyte Review into welfare concerns at British Gymnastics, Sport England and UK Sport have made 19 ‘commitments to action’ across five areas which are designed to support improved safeguarding and wellbeing for everyone involved in sport.

These span the areas of coaching and workforce support, performance athlete support, good governance, dispute resolution and creating safer environments for participants.

British Rowing is actively reviewing its own position in light of the review findings and Sport England/UK Sport commitments. We have identified a number of Sport England commitments which are most likely to impact the wider rowing community in the future:

• Sport England will introduce a national coach register.
• Sport England are committed to improving professional standards, training requirements and development opportunities for coaches.
• Sport England will create a network of local and regional welfare officers.
• Sport England will review safeguarding standards and assurance processes used by sport.
• Sports will be required to sign up to the independent Safeguarding Case Management programme hosted by Sport Resolutions. British Rowing signed up to this programme in February 2021.

Full details of the Sport England Policy Response can be found here.

iRowClean!

Want to upskill your anti-doping knowledge? There are many ways you can do this:

The British Rowing iRowClean Online modules can be accessed here 

The UK Anti-Doping Clean Sport Hub currently hosts three e-learning courses:

• Introduction to Clean Sport
• Coach Clean (coach focussed)
• Compete Clean+ (athlete focussed)

Further details can be found on the UAKD website here.

Regional Rowing Council Representatives Update

As we start a new year there have been changes to the Regional Rowing Council Representatives. A full list of the representatives for each region can be found on the British Rowing website here.