Expert Column - Sara Niblock
It is a lovely opportunity to be able to introduce the ECB Safeguarding Team, to reflect upon some of the safeguarding challenges of the past year and to share some of the strategic thinking for 2021 and beyond.
Ten safeguarding professionals make up the ECB Safeguarding Team. We are based across the country and come together on a daily basis (virtually at the moment) to collaborate, agree on priorities and support our Cricket network across England and Wales. ECB safeguarding team is focused on the delivery of pro-active developments and resources (such as policies/guidance and learning & development) and a reactive case management response. Critical to the success of this is keeping the young person at the centre of our thinking, and communication between the team and the wider network. The reactive response and safeguarding themes are used to shape the pro-active developments.
The context of safeguarding in Cricket is that it needs to touch everyone across the business, in that it needs to be embedded in everything we do. Keeping young people at the heart of what we do is critical and focusing on risk is fundamental to the work of the team. To achieve our objectives, we need young people and their parents to see Cricket not only as a game for them but also as a safe game for them. How we achieve that globally, to a consistent standard is challenging, but this must be our collective focus as we move forward.
The past 12 months have and continue to be challenging. Covid-19 has exposed the inequality and multiple disadvantages some young people face even more starkly. Being at home should be a safe space for children, but for some, this is not the case, and the societal protective factors that usually exist (such as school and social settings) have not been visible for them. This makes our role of keeping children safe even more important and challenging, not just across the safeguarding team, but in everything that we do globally.
The concept of a consistent standard for safeguarding, and what this means across our global organisations, is not yet fully understood. As we move forward, ECB Safeguarding Team is developing a new strategic plan for safeguarding, which will aim to ensure safeguarding is embedded within all business planning processes. In practice, what we would like to achieve is for safeguarding to be considered and embedded within all new streams of work and developments. If we place the young person at the centre of our thinking, we will consider the safeguarding opportunities.
Over the coming months, we hope to collaborate and share thinking with ICC and our global Cricket partners, to help us all achieve the ambition of an agreed and consistent standard for safeguarding.