Safeguarding and Welfare
Everyone shares responsibility for keeping orienteering safe and enjoyable, whether you're an orienteer, parent, coach, club official or spectator.
We want you to feel safe and welcome at our club. Please raise any concerns, or incidents you witness, as early as possible with our Club Welfare Officer or British Orienteering's Lead Safeguarding Officer.
The club is committed to the principles of safeguarding children and vulnerable adults. Our Club Welfare Officer is always there if you need support or advice.
There's more information on British Orienteering's safeguarding pages.
Reporting a concern or incident
All reports are taken seriously and dealt with sensitively. To report a concern or incident, contact either:
British Orienteering Lead Safeguarding Officer
Peter Brooke
This includes any safeguarding concern, inside or outside orienteering, and any concern about adult behaviour affecting the welfare of children or adults at risk, including away from the sport where it involves members or participants.
All reports are logged in confidence with the Lead Safeguarding Officer, who will explain the process that will be followed in each case.
Reporting form
As well as contacting the Club Welfare Officer or Lead Safeguarding Officer, you can use British Orienteering's quick report form. It sends your report straight to the Lead Safeguarding Officer, who will follow up with you directly, and it works well on a phone.
For help completing a form, or with what to do if someone reports something to you, watch this short video.
Safeguarding policies
The club supports and follows British Orienteering's two safeguarding policies:
For resources and training, visit the British Orienteering website or contact the Lead Safeguarding Officer.
Bringing your children orienteering
When you bring your children orienteering, we'll help keep them safe and well. Here's how.
The people who run the sport are safe to be with
Our coaches and officials who have regular unsupervised contact with children and adults at risk have satisfactory Disclosure and Barring Service checks (England and Wales), Access NI checks (Northern Ireland) or PVG checks (Scotland).
The club has a welfare officer.
We take all reasonable steps to keep your children safe from other participants and strangers
Organisers of events and activities carry out risk assessments and have procedures for managing safety in public places.
We have had no reported incidents of children coming to harm from strangers in public places while orienteering.
Courses are manageable for your children's experience and strength
Planners follow rules and guidelines to offer courses and activities with different levels of challenge to meet different needs.
We keep track of every person at every event or activity to make sure everyone is accounted for, and we'll explain the level of challenge of each course.
Please follow our guidance on which course is right for you or your children. To meet our safeguarding and insurance responsibilities, we may refuse to let you do a course if we think you'd be taking undue risk.
Injuries are unlikely, but people and procedures are in place if they happen
Officials organising events and activities carry out risk assessments, and have procedures for finding and looking after lost children and for providing first aid.
Your children's individual needs are considered as far as the sport allows
At events, we'll explain the physical and navigation skills a course needs and how we can help with an individual need.
At coaching sessions, tell us about any additional needs and we'll explain what adaptations we can make to help.