How can parents and carers help safeguard gymnasts?

Apr 14

Dr. Rachel Furley, a paediatric consultant and leader in safeguarding, gives her views on how best to safeguard children and young people participating in gymnastics. She outlines what parents and carers should be looking for and the actions they can take to open a dialogue about healthy interactions.

Content warning: this article contains discussion of safeguarding and abuse in various forms, although no cases are discussed directly and the focus is on prevention and safety measures. Links and resources provided discuss abuse more directly.

Maintaining the safety of children and young people in all aspects of life is something that everyone wants. With the high-profile cases in gymnastics over the recent years, safeguarding children and young people within the sport has become highlighted and many clubs are improving their measures to ensure that they are meeting the needs of their members. Parents and carers are much more involved in safeguarding children and vulnerable adults now and aware of its role as a preventative measure rather than a reactive intervention, which is excellent progress.

What is ‘safeguarding’ children?

The definition of safeguarding children is actions and behaviours that promote the well-being and welfare of a child and protect them from harm.

Those in a safeguarding role should:

Protect children from abuse and maltreatment
prevent harm to children’s health or development
ensure children grow up with the provision of safe and effective care
take action to enable all children and young people to have the best outcomes.

Child protection procedures are part of the safeguarding process when certain thresholds for harm have been met. However, safeguarding procedures should be seen as part of a preventative, safety plan prior to this that encompasses every child to meet their needs and potential in a safe and supported way.

(Adapted from the NSPCC definition of safeguarding children)

What to look for in a club: documents, procedures, policies

The NSPCC has a useful checklist of things to look for in a club that shows that the safety of children and young people is highly valued. These include:

a welfare or child protection officer who you can contact with any concerns
a clear procedure for complaints and concerns
written standards for good practice
effective consent and emergency processes
a safe recruitment process for staff and volunteers, including vetting (these depend on the region, but should include DBS checking in the UK)
staff and volunteers are trained in safeguarding children
children and young people are suitably supervised (based on their age, ability, the activity and venue) by adults who are trained to care for them
the activity takes place in a safe environment – and there are separate changing areas for children and adults

All sports and gymnastics clubs should have a ‘safeguarding children and vulnerable adults’ policy, which is usually readily available on their website in the UK. If not, the club will be able to send it to you on request. If the club does not have a safeguarding policy, this is concerning.

All members of staff should have undertaken basic safeguarding training and have a DBS (criminal background screening) check prior to starting employment; ensuring that all members of staff and all policies are up to date with safeguarding basics is similar to making sure that equipment is checked regularly for safety. Regular checks pick up small issues earlier so they can be addressed before they become larger, catastrophic failures. This is beneficial for everyone. Coaches will also spend significant amounts of time with children and may be able to spot signs of neglect, unusual injuries or abuse earlier than other people outside of the home. Their safeguarding training is hugely valuable in these instances.

All staff should know how to make a safeguarding referral to their local safeguarding partnership. The NHS safeguarding app can be downloaded for free on all platforms and has information about local policies and contact details for each region.

If you have any concerns about bullying or abuse within gymnastics, you can talk to one of the NSPCC’s professional counsellors by calling them on 0808 800 5000 or by emailing help@nspcc.org.uk. The helpline is open 8am-10pm Monday to Friday and 9am-6pm on weekends - or email anytime.

What to do as a parent/carer

It is important to have open discussions with children in your family about a variety of things, which can help with concerns around abuse. Some of these will be difficult and may make you all a little uncomfortable at times – but it is worth practicing!

To start discussions around appropriate touch, I would recommend the NSPCC videos and resources, ‘Talk PANTS’, which are aimed at younger children but having discussions around consent (non-sexual) and appropriate touch is important for young people at all ages. Discussing consensual touch early when your child is participating in gymnastics is important as there may be times that your child will need to be caught unexpectedly by a coach for their own safety without gaining full verbal consent and this might catch your child off-guard if it has not been discussed beforehand.

Specifically around gymnastics, being aware of changing rooms that children are using, particularly when they are young. The NSPCC advises that children should not be sharing changing rooms with adults unsupervised. If this is something that is done by the club that your child attends, are both you and your child comfortable with this? Do they have someone who they can ask for help if they need it? Should they be accompanied? Who would they ask for help if they felt uncomfortable or what would they do? All children/young people should have a safety plan and feel confident about how they would use it if required. Parents Protect have a useful template which is a good starting place to draw up your own customised plan for your family.

With regard to coaching and physiotherapy/medical assessments for children and young people, coaching should be carried out in sight of others and not obscured from view, for the safety of both the coach and the child or young person. For physiotherapy/medical assessments, these should always take place with a parent or carer who should be present and paying attention throughout; not behind a curtain or obscured from view. If a parent or carer is not available, a trained chaperone should be present but this is not advisable and I would recommend waiting for a parent or carer except in an emergency. It is extremely rare that children require internal examinations for any reason (and if they do this would be explicitly discussed with you beforehand – and the child/young person if appropriate and they can understand this). This should not be done for ‘massage’ or ‘realignment’ purposes.

Having open discussions is always beneficial if possible as a child or young person who does not feel blamed (they are the victim, not the perpetrator) is more likely to disclose things that are concerning them. I fully appreciate that this is easier in theory than in reality, at times, when emotions are involved. Having open discussions about these topics is something that gets easier with practice and repetition; it also shows your children that you trust them to discuss challenging subjects.

There are many signs that can be indicators of abuse in children/young people however, these have to be interpreted with great caution because they can be associated with many other issues as well. Families know their children well and these signs should not be taken out of context; jumping to conclusions of abuse can also be harmful. Looking for changes in behaviour and giving the child/young person the opportunity to talk to a trusted person is key. Parents Protect has good advice on warning signs for those who are concerned.

Peer abuse/harmful sexual behaviour

Whilst we are often concerned about the adults in positions of power and potential abuse originating from them, we may overlook the potential abuse that can occur from peers or those displaying harmful sexual behaviours. Often, difficulties between peers is maintained at the level of bullying and does not escalated beyond this (I am not in any way diminishing the long-term effects of bullying, which are well-known to be deeply harmful and long-lasting), there are occasions when peers can become perpetrators of sexual abuse. This is rare and needs to be handled with extreme care as the perpetrator is a child as well and will require significant support as well. The implications on the community of an incident such as this can be huge.

If instances of peer sexual abuse or harmful sexual behaviours from peers is occurring within a sports club, this must be reported via safeguarding referral routes so that the young people involved can be assessed at sexual assault referral services and have social care involved to address the underlying needs.

Photography/videos

I will not go into depth here but as a quick reminder of the law, that photography/videoing and distributing in any way intimate images of young people under the age of eighteen is illegal. Please be careful when sharing images of children online as they can and are used by people that you would rather they were not used by. Please also be aware of what your children are doing online as well, especially with young people spending ever-increasing time online during the pandemic and with increasing social and educational opportunities being accessed online.

How to have difficult discussions

The Lucy Faithfull Project have fantastic resources which are a great start for difficult discussions for families, such as around making a family safety plan, what to do if your child gets into difficulties online and warning signs of sexual abuse. These provide a really useful starting point for discussions that might otherwise seem daunting.

For younger children, these toolkits are useful for online discussions

Dr. Rachel Furley MA MB BChir MRCPCH MBE is a paediatric consultant based in Suffolk and the designated doctor for safeguarding children. She works internationally across Eastern Europe with a focus mainly in Belarus, where she has worked for over twenty years, tackling abuse against women, children and vulnerable groups there. Safeguarding children and vulnerable groups is now the focus of her work within clinical practice and her charity work.