What is Safeguarding in Sport?

[Music] Welcome to ScorePotPast and the very first episode of our journey to the Construct Safe Gardening in the world of sports. We will break down concepts, question assumptions, and unpack the biases and beliefs that shape the conversation around safe gardening. We will dig deep, right to the core of meaning and understanding. And we are your host, Alexandra Volkov and Anata Tadia. And behind the scenes looking after the audio is Ryan Lobbix. Let's the Construct Safe Gardening together. [Music] Today we welcome Dr. Gretchen Kare, connecting from Canada to help us frame the topic. What does abuse mean? What types of violence exist in sport? What is a safe sport environment? And what is safe gardening? Hi Gretchen, we are very happy to have you with us today. I'm delighted to be here. Thank you for the invitation. Dr. Gretchen Kare is a professor and dean of the Faculty of Kinia's Biology and Physical Education at the University of Toronto. Her research on the treatment of youth and women in sport has been widely recognized for its relevance and impacts. Gretchen has collaborated on safe gardening initiatives with the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic Committees, the Canadian Center for Ethics and Sport, and the Coaching Association of Canada. She was a subject matter expert on the development of the universal code of conduct to prevent and address maltreatment in sport. We told Canadian national sport organizations are required to adopt. Gretchen, we would like to get to know you better. Can you please share with us how you started studying out of its maltreatment and in general safe gardening sports? Yes, it's been a long and interesting journey. Academically, I did by PhD in the field of sport psychology and was invited to work with an Olympic team and their athletes and coaches in the area of sport psychology. This was just before an Olympic Games. I was thrilled as my first job to have this opportunity. When I began the work, I discovered that it was far more than the teaching of mental skills to help athletes perform. It was also about helping these young athletes deal with the training environment that they found themselves in. And they found themselves in environments where they were receiving negative comments about their bodies, where they often cried during trainings and had many moments of unhappiness and distress. And my attention then turned to how can we create sport environments that are appropriate for athletes of various ages and use the strategies that are used in education and other fields around how do we know about how people best learn? What do we know about what is best to motivate people and support their development? And that led me to the study of the prevention of emotional abuse and how we create the right kinds of environments for young people to thrive. So this was many decades ago at a time when no one was talking about maltreatment or interpersonal violence. And it was really only in the late 2010s that thanks to athletes coming forward with their experiences of abuse that the field really took off and garnered a lot of public attention and attention within the research community. Gratian, that's a very interesting story and that's exactly why we invited you. We want you to help us to understand what types of violence exist in sport. And when we mean sport, we mean organized and institutionalized sport. The types of violence that we usually talk about in the world of safe sport or safe guarding includes sexual abuse, which is the area that has garnered the most attention particularly within the media. And in fact, if one were to listen to or read media portrayals of safe sport issues, one would think that sexual abuse is rampant throughout sport, but it is not the most prevalent form of violence in competitive sport. Instead, psychological violence has repeatedly been shown across countries and across sports to be the most frequently reported form of violence by athletes. Psychological violence includes everything from harsh criticism, comments that are degrading, humiliating, threatening, belittling. It has more recently included a body shaming and the use of exercise as punishment. So it's expanded to include a number of behaviors. There's also physical abuse, which is not as frequently reported, but of course, still something we want to prevent an addressing sport. And that would be either physical contact with athletes, slapping or hitting, for example, and very importantly, non-contact physical abuse, which could be forcing an athlete to hold an uncomfortable physical position. It could be forcing them to train when they're injured. So there are all kinds of different non-contact forms of physical abuse. And finally, the other form of violence that is often neglected, which is ironic, because it's neglect. In fact, we talk about the neglect of neglect. From the child maltreatment literature, neglect is actually the most common form of child maltreatment and also the most harmful. And this refers to when a child or anyone's basic needs are ignored. So this may be when, for example, there's a failure to provide adequate hydration to athletes when they're training in a very hot environment, or when there's adequate, inadequate, sorry, food provided to athletes. Or an athlete is clearly injured, and there's a failure to provide medical assistance. And this area is very understudied in the realm of sport. So that would be the next frontier in terms of research in this area. So those are the four main types of violence. I'll also note that many of these forms can take place either in person or in the online environment. What we want to clarify here is the intentionality of the violence. If it's intentional, it's considered as violence. If it's non intentional, is it considered as violence? So I'm glad you raised that because that is a key feature in determining whether there is violence or for those who use the framework of maltreatment, whether maltreatment has occurred. The intention of the perpetrator is irrelevant. And one can imagine that if, for example, a coach belittled or threatened an athlete for the purposes of making them mentally tough or more competitive or get the motivation going, if we said that's okay because the coach intended to help the athlete, then what we have is harm occurring as a result of that behavior. What we want is the prevention of harm to athletes. It's not the intent of the perpetrator or actor that is important. It's the potential of the behavior to cause harm to the recipient. So we can't be in a situation where we have athletes being hit or sexually abused and say that's okay because the actor of harm didn't intend to harm. We wouldn't want a world in which that was the case. in all of the maltreatment literature, what's really critical to the definition is that the intent of the actor is not considered. The key area of focus is does the behaviour have the potential to harm the recipient, and if it does have that potential, that's something we want to prevent from happening. Some would argue that without being tough on the outlet, there would be no results, so this is a common misconception. Can you explain a little bit what is differentiation between being reasonably tough to achieve the result and committing psychological violence? I'm really glad you raised that because that is a major misconception we need to counteract in sport. Often when we talk about avoiding those types of psychologically violent behaviors, the reaction from people on the ground in sport will say, "Well, it's great if you'd likely to be soft with the athletes but don't expect the same results." We have decades and decades of research about how people best learn, how people are best motivated, and how to get optimal performance in various fields, whether it's in business or art or music or sport, and all of that evidence points to strategies other than using belivelling, fretting, yelling, pushing, etc. This doesn't mean that we don't encourage people to move out of their comfort zone. In order to learn in order to get better at anything, I mean for all of us learning to drive a car means getting out of our comfort zone. That's inherently part of learning and developing skills in people. In fact, when we think about all of us in our responsibilities, whether it's as a parent, a coworker, even in our own interpersonal relationships, if we ask ourselves a question, "When do we perform at our best?" It's when we're well rested, well fed and hydrated, when we feel good about ourselves, when we feel supported by the people around us. We don't perform better when we feel under threat, when we feel that our self-esteem is low, when we feel that the people around us are not supportive of us. We have to crack this misperception in sport. I just would like to take a step back because I still have this question in my mind. You said that it's best to treat athletes humanly, to encourage them to have a different mindset. So why is there violence in sports? Can we find a cause or a starting moment, or is it always been like this because violence is part of society as we hear all the time saying? I think it's important to remember that violence has always occurred in sport, and efforts to address violence have always occurred in sport. So we talk about the safe sport movement that really took hold in about 2015 or so, and the recent initiatives around safeguarding athletes. There's all of this assumption that the safe sport movement is something new. So we can go back decades and decades to the introduction of helmets, for example, to protect athletes. The addition of age categories to prevent children from being exploited as commercial athletes. There have been writings about the problems of early specialization for decades and decades, just as our views of violence in society change across time. So to our views of violence in sport. So at one time, for example, it was acceptable for coaches and athletes to share a hotel room when they traveled in order to save money. Now of course, our views of that have changed, and that's no longer viewed as an acceptable behavior. Also learned a lot more about child development, about how people best learn. So we see in the education system, instead of punishment being used, you know, there was a day when teachers used to yell at kids, used to hit them. In fact, used to put them in the corner, facing the wall if they misbehaved. Those behaviors would no longer be considered acceptable. Instead, in both education and parenting, punishment has been replaced with discipline and with more child-centered approaches. Parents don't spake children as they used to, at least in many countries. And in fact, some countries, it's a criminal offense, whereas corporal punishment was once acceptable in a parent-child relationship. The same evolution has occurred in sport, although I would argue that it's been slower. It's important that sport align its norms, its values, its expectations, with those of the broader society in which it exists. So justice, we wouldn't allow, or view is acceptable, a teacher to hit a child or to belittle a child. Those expectations have now infiltrated sport and the behavior of the adults in positions of power. So that's one piece of the evolution of our views towards violence in sport. Now, in terms of causes, of course, there's no one cause. Certainly, there's been a downloading of the behaviors that we see in professional sport, filtering down to children's sport, rather than viewing children's sport as its own entity. In professional sport, we see athletes being treated very differently, they're traded from one team to another, they're viewed more as property of the team. We see that happening to some extent in children's sport as well. In fact, if you're familiar with the junior hockey, a sexual abuse case that occurred in Canada, we see those junior hockey players as teenagers being traded from one team to another as though they're property. So one cause is this view that what happens at the professional level of sport should happen at lower levels. Other causes are the influence of these misconceptions about how to develop athletes that I've just spoken about. We have, of course, the influence of performance outcomes and this role that win loss records have. So as long as we have this win at all costs approach, without considering the methods by which we get to those wins, we're always going to have processes that may be unhealthy or dangerous for the athletes. And I think that's been a major problem. Everybody wants to win and there's nothing wrong with that. But if that's the major focus, without considering the process by which we get to that win, it opens up possibilities for harm. Instead, we should be focusing on the process by which we get to the podium and let the outcome take care of itself. So those are some of the causes of violence. There are others in some countries. There's very little in the way of coach education. There's another assumption that prevails in sport that if you've been an athlete, it will make you a good coach. And yes, while it enables a coach to understand the sport, if they've been an athlete, we don't do this in any other field. We've all been students. Does it mean we're going to be a good teacher? We've all been children. Does it mean we're going to be a good parent? Having coach education is a major piece of this, but not just coach education around the sport or what we call the Xs and O's. The coach education should really be around child and youth development. It should be around how learning occurs, how motivation happens, how to support. the whole person development, more so than the techniques of the sport itself. You promised to go back and explain us why this humanisation of behaviour of human beings is slower in sport comparing to other industries. Like you say, in parents, and it's happening more and more, as certain parents' behaviour is now criminalised, meaning spanking and physical violence towards your children in schools as well. Why is it slower in sport? So many researchers have written about the autonomy of sport. And what's meant by that is it exists within its own sector of society that in many cases is unregulated and allowed to make its own rules, its own policies and procedures without oversight. For example, if one of us has an issue with a school teacher, in most countries there is a regulatory body that licenses teachers to be able to teach. It determines what one needs to become a teacher and the save applies for doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc. where there's a regulatory body that says, "This is what you need in order to become a teacher, these are the credentials you need." The regulatory body has the authority to give you a license to practice. And when there's misconduct or an allegation of misconduct, they have the authority to investigate and to remove one's license. In many countries that does not exist in sport, it operates in its own bubble and one could argue in its own echo chamber. This is why we have in sport a known problem when there's misconduct by someone, let's say an an actor of violence, that person just changes clubs or they change location in which they do their work because there's no regulatory body that in many countries that says, "No, you no longer have the license to do what you're doing." And so the autonomy of sport has been attributed to this notion that sport has been slower to adopt the norms and values and expectations that exist in society than other sectors have. Gretchen, I would like to pick on what you said about the example of the license. Are you referring to professional sports? You were also talking about grassroots. Just to better understand this violence happening in a nanodaylor sports, there is mainly an issue in professional sports because of the race to the podium and the performance pressures. Just to explain, by professional, I think we mean institutionalized or organized sport or elite sport, not necessarily sport where you gain money for your performance. Most of the research in this field has been done on organized sport from children to adult participants. In fact, there's very little research on sports in which athletes are paid for their performance. So we're talking about organized competitive sport and we know that violence occurs at all levels there and particularly at the lower levels of organized sport, the entry level of competitive sport. In many countries, the coaches are volunteers. They may be a parent who steps up to support their child's team. There may be a small course that these coaches have to take, but it certainly doesn't cover requisite knowledge around child development and how children learn. And so that's a missing piece in many countries, that knowledge base around how to develop young people. And now we want to set it on for the whole season. We would like you to explain to us what means safeguarding and what means safeguarding in sports. And if you have this knowledge, where this terminology comes from. It has existed in the UK for a long time and has referred to not all the the prevention of harm, but adherence to human rights and the support of optimal development. When it was first adopted in sport, in many ways, it was adopted to refer to the prevention of harm only. How do we prevent maltreatment or violence from occurring? More recently, it appropriately has been expanded to include not only the prevention of harms, but the optimization of the sport experience. Optimization in a way that people's needs are supported, their human rights are supported, and we're talking about a sport experience that achieves the potential we talk about sport achieving. Lots of research shows that sport has the potential to contribute to physical, psychological, social development. It has the potential to enhance academic performance, relationship development. It has the potential to do so very wonderful developmental things. That's the promise of sport. And so safeguarding is a way to look at how do we increase the likelihood that those promises that sport makes can be achieved. If one takes that view and ask the question, how can we create sport experiences that achieve its potential in terms of contributing in really significant ways to individual community and societal benefits? If we can do that, then violence prevention happens as a byproduct. We see the movement in this area of sport shifting from a focus on how do we keep violence from happening? To asking the more important question, which is how do we create the best possible sport experiences? And how do we create the best sport environments so that everybody in that environment can thrive? Crachan, can you explain to us what this means, this best sporting environment, safe sporting environment? What are the elements of this? Well, there are environments where, of course, people feel physically safe, where they feel psychologically safe, where they have their developmental needs met, whether they're five years old or 20 years old, they're having their developmental needs met, they're developing really important relationships within that sport environment. And they're learning skills that will help them in other walks of life. There's also a large body of literature that supports this notion that if sport is delivered and designed in a developmentally appropriate way, that young people learn skills that will help them in life outside of sport. Teamwork, leadership, how to resolve conflict, how to cooperate, how to persevere through frustrations. These are the types of skills that benefit all of us in various walks of life. Crachan, you mentioned the word movement when it comes to safeguarding. Can you explain us a little bit more in your point of view when and how and actually why did safeguarding of sports people became an area of responsibility for various sports stakeholders? Well, efforts to safeguard athletes and others in sport have existed for centuries, essentially. I think this movement, if I can call it that, really emerged in the mid-2010s, thanks to very brave athletes who spoke about their very harmful experiences. What's interesting is we've had other moments of crises before. In the 1990s, there were a number of high profile cases that occurred across the UK, across Canada, the US, and there was a flurry of activity at that point to create policies, to create educational initiatives, tremendous media attention, and then it fizzled out. Then again, this moment of crises, one can point to the NASCAR case in the US. We had a couple in Canada, the very Bennett case in the UK. There were lots of them and the Penn State case as well. Again, this garnered tremendous media attention, athletes spoke up, organizations such as the gymnast of the Lions emerged to talk about the problems in gymnastics. I think it was the ongoing pressure from athletes to make change that has really galvanized this movement and we've seen as a result the development of many policies including at the IOC level we've seen safeguarding toolkits developed many many educational programs across the world and these have all been great things. Now the hope is that that momentum continues and doesn't fizzle out like it did in the 1990s and we still have a lot of work to do. We actually don't know at this point how effective all those initiatives are. We lack knowledge about how effective the policies are, the educational programs, the reporting mechanisms and so I think that's the juncture we're at at the moment. Tremendous progress has been made but we can't take our photo off the gas at this point. We have to keep it going because we don't know at this point whether those initiatives really important initiatives are effective. We still have a lot of work left to do but that's sort of the origin of what I could call this movement. It's really interesting because you spoke about many different types of research and policy document frameworks initiatives and we're wondering here is there a consensus around what safeguarding is at international level or local level and in other words does a standardization of definitions and terminology help the industry? Do we all agree that this is called safeguarding before even going into defining evaluation of effectiveness? That's a very interesting question because there's a variety of terminology used in the field. Interpersonal violence for example is used stemming from the World Health Organization's categorization of violence. For those who come from the field of child development they tend to use the words of maltreatment. I don't think this is a problem as long as people talk about the theoretical perspective they're bringing to the issue and recognize that other terms exist. I don't think at this point there is consensus around what safeguarding means. I think for many it still is rooted in the prevention of harm. For others it has always been the promotion of human rights or the promotion of children's rights. That promotion of rights or rights-based sport does not seem to garner the same traction on the ground as perhaps it should and I think that's why safe sport safeguarding has emerged because those are terms that most people who work in the field of sport can relate to. Safe guarding has also come to mean the prevention of injuries and concussions. It has come to mean the prevention of match fixing or gambling and this is where there are some challenges and something that in the field we call concept creep. This word is expanding in its meaning and I think that's the reason I would say we don't have consensus around what this term means. I want to build on the Nata's question. You answered what about definition of safeguarding. I want to ask you about the definitions of violence and do you have consensus on having the same definitions? You work in academia and you go through various types of research. So if you want research you call it one way and in totally different research in another end of the world you call it a different way then you can't consolidate these two research papers to get more appropriate data. Do you think that if the definition was standardized in the whole sports industry would it help you researchers to research better and then to consolidate the data? If we had consistent terminology we'd be better able to use consistent measures and with consistent measures you would be talking about the same type of data. On the other hand there's value in the different theoretical perspectives that lead to the different terminology. I think it's probably more important that we're clear about what we're talking about. So for example let's say we all agree that threatening athletes is an inappropriate behavior. As long as we have consistency in that it doesn't matter so much whether we call it psychological abuse or interpersonal violence. As long as we agree that the behavior in itself is something we want to address and change. I think that would be my position on this and others may feel differently but I think it's about flipping the question to what are the behaviors that we want to see in sport and let's get consensus around that. Another question that we wanted to ask you is about common misconceptions that would need deconstructing. So we mentioned before a myth around coaching that needs debunking. Now we'd like to ask you is there any myth around safeguarding that would need debunking as well. Something I'm very concerned about in this area is the myth that coaches are perpetrators of harm. And I say that because yes we've had many high profile cases where perpetrators are coaches but that doesn't mean that the vast majority of coaches enact harm. In fact the majority of coaches we know do not. I mean the Larry Nassar case is a prominent example. Tremendous harm, not a coach. Coaches are critical to the success of sport experiences. Not that we don't need more education and more supports and so on but I worry that the safe sport movement is viewed as an attack on coaches. We also must remember that coaches can be victims or recipients of violence. And I think that's a point that's often ignored as our officials, administrators, etc. While there's been a justified focus on harms to athletes we mustn't forget that violence can occur to all people who are engaged in the sport sector. So that would be one. Another is that as I mentioned before that safeguarding is about violence or abuse respite and it shouldn't be. It should be about far more than that. The promotion of athletes and human rights more broadly. I would also say that there's a myth around the expenses associated with safeguarding. That safeguarding is going to require excessive and additional budgets to hire safeguarding officers etc. etc. There may be an increase in the short term for these things but if we find effective policies effective education effective reporting mechanisms it is going to be financially a savings in the long run. And I mentioned that it's obviously not a primary motivator. Our motivator is the health and well-being of people in sport but I think it's important because administrators need to be considering the financial aspects. The financial aspects of a case like the NASR case is devastating. If we get for right and prevent those kinds of cases from coming up it will be economically far more viable. Perhaps this is exactly where the sports sector can learn from other industries in how to operationalize safeguarding policies. Where can the sports sector learn from and something you mentioned before about the promotion of rights based sport? Is it the human rights movement or practice that sport can learn from? Absolutely. People have a scholarship in writing about the promotion of children's rights adherence to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children. I've been talking about the promotion of human rights more broadly for decades and decades. And so yes we absolutely need to learn more about how to operationalize a rights based approach in sport. I think the other areas where sport could learn from are other sectors where they'd involve young people. So, how does the education sector develop talent in young people? The child development field, adolescent development, adult development are also really important fields that have the answers to these questions. It's about learning from those sectors and applying the work in sport. We wanted you to pinpoint some maybe successful case studies of establishing violence free environment, not necessarily from other industries, but maybe you familiar with organizations with local clubs, national associations, something from Canada? I think I would point to the education system. The history of education in Canada, and I know in some other westernized countries, teachers were originally volunteers. Very much like community-based sport. It was not a respected position. There were no qualifications to become a teacher. It would just be somebody from the community who could be co-opted to teach children. There were days when some of us may remember, in fact, so it's not that long ago in historical terms, when teachers would hit children or principals would hit children with the yardstick or children would be sent to the corner wearing a dance cap if they were not behaving properly. Today we would call all of those psychological violence or psychologically abusive behaviors. Over time, education in terms of teaching has become a recognized profession and a regulated profession. Now teachers must go through training. They must go through entry to practice requirements. They must have a license and they must engage in professional development. Imagine if we had a coaching profession that was like that. I know this varies across countries, but imagine where to become a coach even at the community level. It's a regulated profession in terms of coaches needing to learn about sport, yes, but more importantly, to learn how to develop talent in a developmentally appropriate way. There was a license to practice and require professional development. That would change the face of sport in a significant way if we followed that trajectory that occurred in education. Similarly, with respect to the young people, in education, those historically abusive practices has been replaced with more developmentally appropriate pedagogical strategies because we've learned a lot more about child development. classrooms and learning environments are far more welcoming. They're inclusive of children from different backgrounds and different abilities. Often learning programs are established based on the individual needs of the child. That whole terrain has changed to become more child-centered. If we took that approach to sport where it's child-centered or adolescent developed or more broadly, I would say person-centered, so we don't limit this to child athletes. If sport took a more person-centered approach, that would mean that individual developmental needs are addressed and that human rights are here to and promoted with a more person-centered approach to sport. In some, I think we could learn a tremendous amount from the education sector both in terms of the training required of the professionals leading education as well as the design and delivery of learning for the learners. And at the end of the day, athletes are learners and that's how they should be healed. It's great because you already answered one of our very last questions about the way forward and it's also great this conversation that we had with you looking backwards in the past, contextualizing it into the present and also giving suggestions into the future. Is there anything else that you would like to share with us in addition to these key points that you mentioned about the need of creating an evaluation process on the effectiveness of the policies, human rights-based environment and care and training of the coaches, not only of the coaches, but everybody who works in sports. So what else would you like to tell our listeners? I think to summarize, I would say that safe guarding, it's multi-layered, multi-sectoral and multi-factored. And what I mean by that is it will require attention at the interpersonal level. So how adults and athletes interact, it will require yes policies, education, investigative and reporting mechanisms, but it will also require governance changes as I mentioned to address the autonomy of sport. I would argue to rethink the way in which sport is funded and that it not be funded based on how well a team or a sport does in its metal counts or its win-loss records. Because again, as soon as you focus on the outcome, you've taken your eyes off the process. I would love to see sport and recognizing this as an idealistic viewpoint, but I'm going to put it out there anyway. That sport be funded based upon the adherence to human rights and the developmental outcomes of participants. So imagine that coaches are hired, fired and promoted and sports are funded based upon injury rates of athletes, the number of cases or complaints that are brought forward by participants and that that can be coaches or athletes or administrators, officials and so on. On the retention rates, how well do we keep our participants in the sport? Not only as participants as athletes, but to what extent do participants as athletes stay in the sport as coaches, officials, volunteers? That would be a wonderful outcome measure. So if we change our outcome measures to be around health and well-being, enjoyment, retention rates, we would have a very different sport system. That would be my wish. I almost regret having asked you this because this would open up for an entire new episode that we should address changing outcomes measures, but it's been a great conversation and I want to pick on a couple of words you mentioned because this will set the tone for our season and this is this multilayered, multidimensional component the safe guarding has and that we will try to deconstruct with our episodes and with our guests in the future. We couldn't be more thankful for this insightful discussion. As the Nata said, it sets the tone for the whole season and will make out the construction journey, I guess, easier. What do you think, Thanata? For sure, it will be very interesting. It will be a very good learning journey for us and for all our listeners. Last question for you, is there any book or article that you would like to recommend our listeners? Check out if they want to learn more about violence in sports and safe guarding. I think as an overview of the field, I'd recommend the roadlage handbook of athlete Welfare by Melanie Lang who has written a lot about rights-based sport, but the book covers a range of topics and I think that would be a wonderful overview and if readers are interested, they can pick up on the references in that book to go off in different directions. Thank you very much, Gretchen. It was amazing to have you with us today and now it's time to say goodbye. Thank you very much. It's been an absolute delight and I'm thrilled that you're taking on this series. It's such an important topic and thank you again for including me. Thank you for listening. This show is produced by Score Sport Think Tank. With a Switzerland-based association, we are dedicated to creating safe spaces for honest and meaningful conversations that positively impact the world of sports. Special thanks to the entire score team working behind the scenes. To our brilliant sound wizard, Ryan Lobbyx and to our wonderful graphic designer Natalia Plaza Sanchez. Be sure to check out our LinkedIn page for more information about this episode and also the work that we do and we invite you to explore the other episodes as we continue this journey of the constructing safeguarding in sport. (upbeat music)