At the BEAA, we believe that safeguarding and sporting success go hand in hand.
If athletes are to fulfil their potential, it’s important they feel both physically and psychologically safe in their performance environment.
We see that from both an athlete and sport perspective in our role as the independent representative body for Britain’s World Class Programme-funded athletes.
When we support an athlete with safeguarding concerns, we see the impact unsafe environments can have on their wellbeing and, consequently, their performance.
And, when we collaborate with organisations across Britain’s high-performance system to develop safeguarding policies and processes, we see how robust safeguarding practices allow athletes to flourish. This was reinforced last month, as we supported Team England with their safeguarding operations at the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games, where BEAA Athlete Support Manager Emma Speer fulfilled the role of Lead Safeguarding Officer.
This was our first time providing direct safeguarding support to a team at a multi-sport event, giving us a valuable opportunity to use our expertise in a new environment and to learn more about what effective safeguarding looks like in this setting.
Here are three things that stood out to us.
Safeguarding is most effective when athletes have confidence in the people they can speak to and the process that follows when a concern is raised.
Independence is an important part of that. It provides a degree of separation from sporting decision-making and gives athletes and staff confidence that concerns can be raised, considered objectively and, where necessary, challenged.
Importantly, independence does not mean operating in isolation. Our experience in Glasgow reinforced the value of safeguarding being embedded within the wider delegation, with strong relationships across sports and support services and a good understanding of the environment in which athletes and staff were operating.
We were able to strike the right balance of being connected enough to understand the context and work collaboratively, while retaining enough independence to provide an objective perspective where needed.
Safeguarding isn’t a tick box exercise and it’s not something that should be left as an afterthought when preparing for a competition.
If you want athletes, coaches, senior leaders and volunteers to have confidence in your safeguarding system, you need experienced practitioners who understand safeguarding in a high-performance environment.
There is a pressure that comes with that, and having people who are used to operating in that setting builds trust in the safeguarding function. Clearly defined roles and established processes are also key, but they take time.
Emma began working with Team England at the end of 2025, which allowed her to understand the different sporting environments involved and work collaboratively with colleagues to establish clear safeguarding processes.
This included building relationships with the Designated Safeguarding Officers in each sport, understanding their experience and expertise and working with Team England to ensure they had been given Commonwealth Games-specific training, so they understood their role, responsibility and reporting pathways.
This joined-up approach felt particularly valuable at a multi-sport event, where athletes and staff come together from sports with different safeguarding structures, processes and levels of expertise. It helped create a shared understanding of safeguarding expectations and ensured that thresholds were understood and applied consistently across the delegation.
Making it as easy as possible to report a concern is always an important consideration in safeguarding, because the more complex it is, the less likely people are to come forward.
Providing multiple reporting routes, including anonymous, digital reporting channels, is one way to reduce the barriers to reporting and we saw this in Glasgow, where Team England implemented a reporting mechanism whereby anyone on the team could scan a QR code to raise a concern.
The takeaway for us is that good safeguarding reporting processes must be safe and transparent if we’re to create an environment where people feel they can speak up. Raising a concern shouldn’t put someone in a position where they have to make a judgement on whether their concern is valid or need to feel confident enough to initiate a conversation.
