Our recent Team Day to promote welfare and safeguarding

By Rachel Garbutt (she/her) | 24 January 2025 | TAGS: Safeguarding, Child Welfare Officers, Children and young people

Katie and I have been working as Sport and Physical Activity Welfare Leads for about a year now. Our job is to make sure everyone in sports feels safe, included, and supported. To do that, we need to understand how GM Moving works, and help our team make a difference in people’s lives.

With this in mind, last week we hosted a team day on welfare and safeguarding. We particularly wanted to dig into how to keep people safe, respected and included. We talked with our team about what a good welfare culture looks like in sports. We know it's critical to to understand how people’s experiences in sports can affect how they feel about being active for their whole lives. We discussed this through the lens of belonging, respect, and participant voice.

Each team set out their key messages around welfare within their own work. We considered how welfare is a thread that runs through our mission of active lives for all, and key to creating positive experiences for people of all ages. 

In the afternoon, experts from the Child Protection in Sport Unit (CPSU) joined us for a training session about child safeguarding. They helped us think about what we can do, as individuals and as a team, to make sports a safe and happy place for everyone.

We ended the day with something fun: Walking Netball! But it didn’t stay walking for long—soon we were all running! Everyone joined in, no matter their ability. It was the perfect way to wrap up a day focused on caring for others and staying active.