Select A Role - Select which role applies best to you - it will help us deliver the most relevant content for you in the future. Select one if you are an administrator, coach or official, player or parent.
Administrator
Administrators play a vital role in sport, particularly to reduce the potential for things to go wrong. Here, you can access resources to help you manage risks in your sport.
Coach or Official
Coaches and officials are what make sport tick. They play a crucial role in helping keep sport safe, fair and inclusive. Here are a number of tools and resources to help you do just that.
Player
If you are a player then you can make a huge contribution to making sport safe, fair and inclusive. Your behaviour influences others, not only your team mates, but everyone involved in sport.
Parents
As a parent you should be aware of your clubs responsibilities. At the same time you also have responsibilities and you can play a huge role in creating a safe environment for your child.
We created a state-wide campaign and supporting materials to help sport administrators understand how to create a child safety framework that they could use to identify specific risks, and tailor policies and procedures to fit their specific structures.
We designed the Child Safe Sport campaign with help from the Victorian State Government and the Commission for Children and Young People (CCYP).
The campaign included:
a dedicated ‘Child Safe Sport’ page our website (https://vicsport.com.au/child-safe-standards)
a suite of fact sheets and templates based on adapted CCYP resources
tailored resources for state sport associations and clubs/associations
a child safety industry forum
four ‘train-the-trainer’ sessions for sports administrators
case studies to promote best practice
presentations to boards, annual general meetings, club forums and staff meetings
one-to-one support for sport administrators developing and implementing policy
a video to promote state sport association approaches to child safety.
We promoted the campaign through websites, social media, newsletters, presentations, telephone and email advice and face-to-face meetings.
Such was the campaign’s success that we were able to provide advice to Sport Australia on developing a national child safety toolkit. Concurrently, we provided feedback on the Victorian child safe standards to CCYP and state government forums.
Why we did it
In 2015 the Victorian Government passed the Child Wellbeing and Safety Amendment (ChildSafe Standards) Act 2015 which mandated seven standards for any Victorian organisation providing products or services to children.
The standards were applied to sport organisations from 1 January 2017, meaning every state sport association and local club/association (estimated at 16,000 across Victoria) is legally required to meet the standards.
As the peak body for sport and recreation, Vicsport needed to play a role in assisting the sports sector to understand their legal requirements and implement appropriate initiatives to meet the standards.
How we know it worked
We used a member survey, website and social media analytics, and direct feedback as our evaluation tools to measure the campaign’s success.We also set targets that have been measured across both the 2016–17 and 2017–18 years. We have exceeded every target.
Objective: Increase the level of sport organisations’ awareness about child safe standards. Target: 80% of survey respondents record awareness of the standards (state sport associations and regional sports assemblies). Result: 94.7%
Objective: Increase the readiness of sport organisations to implement the standards. Target: 80% of survey respondents have an ability to implement the standards. Result: 82.4%
Objective: Drive traffic to our child safety website pages. Target: 5000 views. Result: 6358 unique views in 2017–18.
Objective: Improve visitor dwell time on child safety website pages. Target: 2 minutes. Result: Average time on pages in 2017–18 was 4:40 minutes
Objective: Increase the Twitter and Facebook impressions (shares/likes/views) for our child safety posts. Target: 20,000. Result: 30,361 in 2017–18.
We also had a target of delivering one-to-one support to 40 sports organisations. To date, we have provided support to 50 organisations, including 41 in 2017–18.
We have also received positive feedback from organisations that we have supported:
“I wish to formally thank you for your presentation at the Orienteering Victoria AGM. Your presence has helped raise the awareness and urgency for the OV Board to start planning and taking action on the Child Safe Standards. You handled both the Board and members present very well. That was greatly appreciated.” Orienteering Victoria
“I have just had a meeting with the Pony Club Australia CEO who is keen to develop a national Child Safe Policy. ASC has done an audit with PCA and she has attended workshops so is aware that Victoria is leading the way. So that means my Action Plan Template will start with collaborate with the NSO! So VicSport resources and PCV resources and collaboration will lead to a national Policy.” Pony Club Association of Victoria.
