Reports of child protection and safeguarding concerns in sport and leisure settings: an analysis of English local authority data between 2010 and 2015

ABSTRACT

The abuse of children in sport has received considerable attention in recent years not least in the UK, where high-profile disclosures of abuse by former sports professionals have led to several independent inquiries and reviews. Subsequent public and media interest has focused on the potential scale of child abuse in sport. This scrutiny has highlighted how little data there are in this area, in a sector that thrives on statistics. This paper analyses official reports of child abuse in sport and leisure settings received by local authorities (LAs) in England during a five-year period (2010–2015) across a range of factors. Findings show that English LAs have varying capacity to provide data on sport/leisure contexts; receive substantively different volumes of reports of child abuse in sport/leisure; and record reports of sexual abuse in sport at higher levels than other forms of abuse. These data suggest that abuse in English sport is significantly underreported but that reports per annum increased over the period.

KEYWORDS:

• Child abuse
• maltreatment
• safeguarding
• sport
• local authority
• reporting

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Local Authority Designated Officer who assisted in the development of the FOIR and the journal reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

All data provided for this study are taken from a Freedom of Information Request made in 2015/2016 to all English Local Authorities. Each authority must publish all data provided under the Freedom of Information Act (2000); therefore, these data can be located through the website of each LA. In addition, the full data set is available from the corresponding author.

Notes

1. The CPSU is a capacity-building organisation that works to support sports organisations to keep children safe from harm.

2.. Only sports and NGBs funded by Sport England are required to implement the CPSU Standards as a condition of funding.

3. According to The Children Act 1989 (s.31): ‘“harm” means ill-treatment or the impairment of health or development including, for example, impairment suffered from seeing or hearing the ill-treatment of another; “development” means physical, intellectual, emotional, social or behavioural development; “health” means physical or mental health; and “ill-treatment” includes sexual abuse and forms of ill-treatment which are not physical. Where the question of whether harm suffered by a child is significant turns on the child’s health or development … [which] shall be compared with that which could reasonably be expected of a similar child’.

4. Or to the police if a child is at immediate risk.

5. Revised government guidance (DfE, 2015) no longer refers to LADOs but makes clear that LAs should have a designated officer or team of officers.

6. Working Together to Safeguard Children 2010: http://www.lcitylscb.org/media/1151/working-together-2010.pdf .

7. These include null responses (i.e. the LA reported that they had received no referrals relating to sport/leisure).

8. ‘Not Known’ refers here to either the absence of data under a specific category (e.g. sex of child) provided by the LA within the FOIR (in some cases redacted data) or to instances where the LA explicitly stated they do not hold this information.

9. National data on children’s participation in sport is not available until 2019 (via Sport England’s new ‘Active Lives’ survey).

10. The Isles of Scilly were excluded (under 18 population = 385).

11. Based on respondent concerns about cost, the following caveats apply: one LA (South West region) searched only for data on sexual abuse referrals; one LA (Yorkshire & Humberside) searched only for referrals from leisure centres for the year 2014–2015.

12. A celebrated national figure famous for children’s entertainment and charitable work who was found to be a prolific sex offender (for more than five decades) shortly after his death in 2011, prompting several national inquiries into institutional failings in organisations such as the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the National Health Service (NHS) and the Department of Health.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mike Hartill

Mike Hartill is Reader in the Sociology of Sport at Edge Hill University. He has undertaken life-history research with men and women who were subjected to sexual violence as children within sport settings and has taught safeguarding in sport to undergraduate students since 2003.

Melanie Lang

Melanie Lang’s research and teaching centres on the policy and practice of safeguarding and child protection. She served as the national expert for the UK and a member of the strategic team for the European Commission–funded project Gender-based Violence in Sport, is an expert member of the Pool of European Experts on Sexual Violence in Sport and is a member of the Sport England/NSPCC Child Protection in Sport Unit Research Evidence and Advisory Group.