Welfare

Badminton England – Safeguarding Training

Badminton England are proud to announce a new partnership with Shout to offer free and confidential mental health text support for anyone in our badminton community.

If you’re feeling anxious, lonely, overwhelmed, stressed or not quite yourself, Shout’s volunteers are there for you any time of day or night, 365 days a year.

The goal of the text conversation is to help you reach a place of calm, with a plan of how to support yourself going forwards.

The service can be used at any time by texting “BE” to 85258.

 Essex supports all Badminton clubs with appropriate safeguarding training and can pay clubs, leagues and individual welfare officers for costs associated with safeguarding training. We are looking at running a safeguarding course for interested parties from all leagues in Essex. 

Please contact Amanda Austin to express your interest.  welfare@badmintonessex.co.uk

Thankfully we are now back on court and things are beginning to return to the old normal. This is the perfect opportunity to post a reminder about the importance of Safeguarding and Welfare to all Badminton Clubs in Essex.

The linked documents may be of help and will point you in the right direction if you do have a concern and will hopefully prove useful for you and your members:

There are documents reminding you of the roles and responsibilities plus a checklist that may help. Additionally, there is an editable poster that can be displayed prominently at your club when return to play is allowed. Also, there is a flow chart that gives you an idea of what to do if someone reports a situation to you. 

My advice would be to ensure that all club members are aware of who your club's Welfare Officer is and that they know how to make contact with them, should the need arise, so the editable poster above is a great and easy way to do this.

There are Safeguarding and Protecting Children (SPC1) courses now available every month online via Badminton England but unfortunately there currently isn't any funding from Badminton England to help with the cost of this so there will be a £30 fee to pay. However, with it being online that does bring benefits as there is no travel time and can be completed in the comfort of your own home. You can find any courses that Badminton England are running on this link: Find a course. You can also find other online and face to face courses direct with UK Coaching

The Essex County Badminton Welfare Update gives lots of details about training courses and valuable information for all Club Welfare Officers so please take a look to see how this may help you in your role and gives you valuable contact details should you ever require them. 

If you would like to attend a safeguarding course and there are enough people, Essex are looking into running one at a reduced cost. If you would like to be involved with this then please contact me. If there are sufficient people this is likely to be a one off event so I suggest a really good opportunity to get your safeguarding training completed. 

Over the last few months Badminton England have updated all of their safeguarding pages with new links and information so it is a good time to take a look at the HIVE learning Hub. The details of this are given in the above Welfare Update link.

If you have any questions either now or in the future please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Amanda Austin

07885063542