Safeguarding in Sports

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Editorial

06 March 2023

Editorial: Safeguarding in sports

Miguel Nery

,

Peter K. Smith

,

Melanie Lang

,

Tine Vertommen

and

Ashley Stirling

4,060 views

2 citations

Editors

5

Miguel Venda Nery

Faculty of Health and Sport Sciences, Universidade Europeia (Lisboa)

Peter Smith

Goldsmiths University of London

Melanie Lang

Edge Hill University

Tine Vertommen

Thomas More University of Applied Sciences

Ashley Stirling

University of Toronto

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About

Athlete welfare and safeguarding should be of central importance in all sports. Episodes of abuse and discrimination in sports occur in all sports and levels of competition. This includes different types of behaviors such as bullying, emotional abuse, sexual harassment and abuse, hazing, physical abuse, other forms of sexual violence beyond sexual harassment, sexism, neglect, or racism, among others. Being a target of these types of behaviors may result in serious and long-lasting consequences for athletes. The increase of scientific research about athlete welfare reflects the growing international preoccupation of some of the major sports organizations to foster healthier sport environments - especially among young athletes and in grassroots sports. This is part of a wider movement of promotion of human rights in sport. Recent public scandals about abuse in sports may have also contributed to the increased attention paid to athlete welfare. These situations have raised public awareness of the existence of a culture of normalization of abuse in sports and an omertà that encourages athlete silence about the abuse they have suffered, in some cases for many years.

Therefore, scholars with different theoretical backgrounds have been working to describe, conceptualize and analyze the nature of different types of abuse in sports. These efforts allowed the first safeguarding programs to progressively flourish. At the same time, governments and umbrella organizations began developing national and specific policies and procedures to prevent and tackle violence, abuse, and discrimination in sports. These consider complementary levels of intervention (macro-, exo- meso- micro-system), different stakeholders (athletes, coaches, parents, among others), each country’s individual status (culture, resources, national legal framework), and specific settings (type of sport, age of athletes, level of competition). Although a collective effort is needed to efficiently tackle abuse, implementing and monitoring prevention programs requires trained stakeholders with specific skills. As such, Club/National Safeguarding Officers are gradually rising in sports organizations internationally. Despite the cooperation of sport stakeholders from all over the world to create general policies, share data and examples of good practices, there is still a lot to improve on safeguarding in sports, which is expected to be one of the hot topics in Psychology and Sports Sciences in the next years.

In this Research Topic, our main aims are for submissions:
1) to present a conceptual analysis of the different types of abuse and discrimination in sports
2) to describe and analyze the nature and prevalence of these episodes in sports
3) to understand the effects of abuse and discrimination on stakeholders, organizations, and sport setting
4) to share clinical approaches to stakeholders involved
5) to analyze evidence-based strategies and programs
6) to review the major policies and projects developed worldwide on safeguarding in sports
7) to review the legal framework of different countries regarding athlete welfare

Scope:
Safeguarding; violence; abuse; discrimination; international policies; evidence-based strategies/policies; instruments and methods

Types of manuscripts:
Original research article; rapid/short communications; review articles; case studies; methods paper

Image: Augustas Cetkauskas

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Editors

Miguel Venda Nery

Faculty of Health and Sport Sciences, Universidade Europeia (Lisboa)

Peter Smith

Goldsmiths University of London

Melanie Lang

Edge Hill University

Tine Vertommen

Thomas More University of Applied Sciences

Ashley Stirling

University of Toronto

Impact

118,155 Total views

88,575 Article views

25,268 Article downloads

4,312 Topic views

Published In

Frontiers in Psychology

Personality and Social Psychology

Frontiers in Sports and Active Living

Sports Management, Marketing, and Economics

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