Child Abuse in Football and Safeguarding Training

Hi guys. Mark Dawes here once again. If you saw the last video about, “What can I do, what am I allowed to do if someone absconds? Can I use force, etc.?”

One of the things I mentioned in that video was about safeguarding, because if we’re allowing a vulnerable patient to abscond and not do anything about it, then there’s a potential safeguarding issue there.

Which brings me onto this video, actually. Unless you’ve been hiding in a hole somewhere, in a cave in the middle of nowhere, you can’t not have helped to see the news issues around child abuse in football.

We now have about 350 victims, according to the police, who are actually coming forward. 17 police forces across the UK now are investigating child sexual abuse in football.

I mean, in The Telegraph, we’ve had this issue here in Southampton. I live in Hampshire, so this is local to me, where a coach is sacked over child sex abuse allegations. You know, while he was in football.

The Guardian Newspaper have said a quarter of Britain’s police forces are now investigating sexual abuse of children in 55 football clubs. This is massive. It takes us back to things like Rochdale, where we had children who were groomed by a gang. You can see it here, I’m just Googling this stuff. These guys got 25 years each. Each of these nine guys got 25 years for sexual exploitation.

You know, this is going on in our country today. This was reported in The Telegraph on the 20th of May: “We’ve been ignoring an epidemic of child sexual abuse in Britain”.

This is why we’ve put this course on. It’s a child safeguarding training course, it’s a three day course. We ran one last year, we’re running the second one here again. It’s on the 21st to 23rd of Feb. We’re running at Lilleshall and this is a really, really important course these days.

We’re doing this is an organisation, because not only should we be protecting children, but it’s the right thing to do.

How do you recognise the signs and what do you do if a situation all of a sudden opens itself up to you?

For example, go back to Basic Safeguarding, the video I did. There’s a link below to the video. If you’re going to allow a vulnerable child to abscond, as an organisation, if you don’t have the right staffing resources and you let that child abscond, there are safeguarding issues there.

Other questions. If a child wants to leave a care home and they’re at risk of being sexually exploited or that risk of going away and being harmed by taking drugs or in other ways, should we lock a door? Basic fundamental questions that staff believe that they can’t do these things. It comes back to basic safeguarding.

In a restraint, let’s look at some of the issues around restraint. Now, this is something we talk about in the course, or Andy, the trainer, will talk about specifically.

Some of the techniques we use to actually administer medication to children under restraint, they can be challenged on a safeguarding basis. I mean taking a child down into a prone position, pulling their pants down, and injecting the upper right quadrant of their backside. It may be necessary, but is that the only way we can do it?

There are massive things here. I’m really giving a shout-out for this course, not because I’m trying to sell it to you (which, obviously I am). It’s because it is a very important course. That’s why we’ve put it on.

And I’ll give an example, one I had the other day.

Let’s say you’re teaching some children, and you’re teaching them self-defense. You say, “Right, okay. Let’s teach you a defence in a strangle.” One child goes to put their hands on another child’s throat, and that child starts to suffer a trauma. I’ve heard instructors in the past say, “Well, look. It’s just self-defense. Get on with it. Get over it.” We don’t know the history, or we don’t know the right questions to ask. We can leave ourselves wide open.

The other day on Facebook, coming back to personal safety training, someone actually posted something on Facebook and they said something along the lines of that they were doing a personal safety talk in a girls’ school.

One of the girls fainted as a result of one of the slides that he had shown. Now, that in itself may not necessarily be a safeguarding issue, but it’s what you do post-that that’s interesting. If you hadn’t pre-framed what you’re going to show someone, and you’re going to show them something traumatic that might actually give them a flashback; induce trauma based on a previous event, then you need to think about that as well.

Safeguarding is not just about what we do if we know something is going to happen. It’s also about the preventative measures we can take.

Like I said, we’re running this on the 21st to 23rd of February. Last year’s course was a huge success, and we’re looking forward to running this one again. If you are interested, put your details in the box. We’ll send you out more information. If you want to book online, you can book online here. There’s a two payment option at the moment. That will expire very shortly. Andy is a great trainer. There’s lots of good information on this course. I’m going to bring some to play on this one as well, because it’s relative to some of the stuff I’m doing with our corporate clients.

There it is, guys. If you’re interested, click on the, “Sign Up,” button or put your details in this box, here, to get more information, and we’ll ping some stuff out to you.

Thanks for listening, team. I’ll speak to you soon.