Safeguarding
Saints Safeguarding Week
With the new season now underway and our activities with young people and vulnerable adults making a return, we thought it was a timely opportunity to remind everyone of what safeguarding is and what to do if you have a worry or concern about someone and so last week we celebrated our first ever Saints Safeguarding Week.
On Monday 28th September, we invited key safeguarding partners from across the city, Hampshire Constabulary, Premier League and FA to tell us more about their roles and how they can help support us which proved very inciteful. It is really important to us that we work collaboratively with our local safeguarding partners to keep people safe.
On Tuesday 29th September, we ran a live mock safeguarding incident with key staff from the Academy. This is like our fire drill of safeguarding to test our responses and have conversations in a safe space about who would do what if a serious incident ever occurred. This event was a great success and staff involved were able to develop their problem-solving skills and identify key actions to be taken should a serious incident ever take place.
On Wednesday 30th September, we officially launched our new safeguarding policy. The document covers children, young people and adults at risk, and lets people know what safeguarding is, what to look for and what to do if they have a concern about someone.
On Thursday 1st October, we partnered with the Premier League to act as the first pilot club to roll out their new Safer Event Management system and we launched the new platform to key staff in our Saints Foundation. The system will allow us to capture key information regarding events, trips and tours in one place and during the training key staff learned how to plan a safe event including how to complete risk assessments, carry out due diligence on third parties involved and de-brief to ensure any lessons learned are captured.
On Friday 2nd October, we had an insightful training session delivered by colleagues from the Police Cyber Choices Team focusing on keeping young people and ourselves safe in a digital world. Staff learned how to identify different types of cyber crime, how young people may be drawn into cyber crime and how they can protect themselves and others in the online world.
Tim Greenwell, Chief Legal and Risk Officer and Senior Safeguarding Lead said about the week, "Our first safeguarding awareness week was a great chance for us to raise understanding of the role that everyone has to play in safeguarding at the club and to virtually engage with key partners from across the city. We hope that the variety of events helped everyone to understand the impact that they can have in creating a safe, welcoming and enjoyable environment for everyone that we work with. The start of a new season offers us an excellent opportunity to show the great progress that we have made in this area throughout the club."
