An analysis of child safeguarding cases managed by National Governing Bodies of sport across England and Wales

This study responded to a recommendation in the independent Duty of Care Report that called for standardised data to be collected and analysed regarding safeguarding cases in sport. A standardised case data tool was developed and piloted before being adopted by National Governing Bodies across England and Wales. An analysis of the first 4 years of data shows that a total of 3129 cases were managed. Overall, 54% of cases concerned behaviour outside of the context of sport. This demonstrates that sport plays an important role in the broader child protection system. In the remaining 46% of cases, the safeguarding concern was related to behaviour in the context of sport. The most commonly reported forms of concern in sport were physical abuse (20%), contact sexual abuse (20%), non-contact sexual abuse (17%) and emotional abuse (17%). The threshold for cases to be included in the analysis was that the case was judged to be sufficiently serious to involve referral to, or consultation with, the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO), Children's Services or the Police. There are clearly many cases that did not meet this threshold or were never reported, and hence, these data provide an indication of the safeguarding issues related to sport. The need to expand the tool to collect lower level concerns as well as to include safeguarding concerns regarding adults is advocated.