How Can We Keep our Children Safe in Sport?

MEDIA RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 23 March 2010

How Can We Keep our Children Safe in Sport?

Every week hundreds of thousands of New Zealand parents send their children off to numerous sporting endeavours assuming that their children are safe.

The sentencing of Grant Williams, a former soccer club manager, for indecently assaulting seven boys aged under 16, raises many questions. Are our children safe in sport? What about all the other activities where our children are in the care of other adults? And what can we do to make sure they are safe?

Anthea Simcock, CEO and founder of CPS, New Zealand’s child protection training specialist organisation says “Our children must be kept safe. The case of Grant Williams clearly shows that the system let these children down. For someone to be hired as a soccer club manager, when it was known that they had previously indecently assaulted a child is incredible.”

“The first responsibility lies with the club to hire safe staff. When children are involved, it is absolutely imperative that reference checks are done and potential staff are Police vetted. If something of concern comes out of this process, it must be acted on. Clearly in this case it was not. The club obviously felt that getting a “good” coach was more important than hiring a “safe” coach.”

Mrs Simcock has published a book called “Safe not Sorry – A handbook for selecting suitable people to work with children”. She encourages anyone hiring staff to work with children to use this resource to ensure our children are protected in every way possible. This publication is available from www.cps.org.nz.

“Parents can also do things to ensure their children are kept safe in sport, and any environment in fact.” says Mrs Simcock. “Recent research for a new book we are publishing at the moment shows that fear is the biggest reason children don’t speak out. Fear of getting in trouble, fear of the perpetrator following through on their threats, fear of causing problems for the family. Fear is hugely powerful”

“As parents we need to talk to our children and let them know how important it is to share “bad” secrets or anything that is worrying them. We need to empower them to know that it is ok, and in fact important, that they talk about bad or worrying things that may be happening to them. Open communication with children is an essential tool is todays environment where they are constantly exposed to situations where they need to make informed choices.”

To learn more about protecting children, or for information about CPS, visit www.cps.org.nz.

ENDS

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