Supporting continuous quality improvement in safeguarding at Hockey Australia and other national sporting organisations

Jarrod Dowdy, Hockey Australia

Douglas Russell, Institute of Child Protection Studies, Australian Catholic University

Samantha Dellamarta, Hockey Australia

In 2021, Hockey Australia developed a “Safe Hockey” Framework to address the sport’s response to children’s and young people’s safety and wellbeing, including the ongoing threat of sexual abuse and other types of harm. Hockey Australia will use the Children’s Safety and Safeguarding Capabilities Surveys, developed by the Institute of Child Protection Studies, to evaluate the effectiveness of the Framework by measuring children and young people’s perception of safety in hockey, and how capable Australian Hockey Organisation staff and volunteers feel about their role in safeguarding children and young people in hockey (read about the surveys here).

Hockey Australia will deploy surveys to participants across its pathways and representative levels of hockey. Participants will be engaged using a facilitated and supported face-to-face approach, ensuring they are informed and understand the purpose of the survey. The surveys use established quantitative research methods to collect and analyse the empirical evidence gathered.

Results will be used to identify and inform Hockey Australia’s continuous improvement efforts and how the surveys and tools may be deployed nationally to evaluate the child safety and safeguarding frameworks and efforts of other national sporting organisations.