WSA Safeguarding and DBS: Keeping You Safe in Sport
The Welsh Sports Association (WSA) is committed to ensuring that sport and leisure is a safe space for everyone to enjoy. We strive to realise this commitment by offering a host of safeguarding resources, including the WSA DBS checking service and training opportunities.
Year on year, more and more organisations and individuals utilise our resources as NGBs of sport and other sporting entities strive to make the sector a safe space.
We are thrilled to be able to support organisations, clubs, coaches and volunteers safeguard children and vulnerable adults and ensure that the sector offers a safe space for people to take part in physical activity.
We are halfway through the financial year for 2024-2025, and we are already on course to see more DBS checks conducted through our service and more participants in safeguarding training courses than last financial year.
The ever-increasingly popular WSA DBS checking service
September 2024 was a landmark month for the WSA DBS checking service, as 2,969 checks were carried out.
This total surpassed the previous record total for a single month by over 15%, set in September 2023 when 2,578 checks were conducted through our service.
By the halfway point of the financial year 2023-2024, we’d seen 10,304 checks go through the WSA DBS checking service compared to 11,693 this year – an increase of 13.5%.
Our DBS service is a key part of our safeguarding offering, with it now being utilised by over 320 organisations from across the UK – both within sport and leisure and outside of the sector.
Discover more about Wales’ only bilingual service and one of the most cost-effective solutions on the market, with Members receiving discounted rates on the already minimal administration fee, here.
More and more attendees on WSA safeguarding training courses
The WSA also provides vital safeguarding training courses for member organisations. The Time To Listen and Team Manager courses are designed to enable club officers to have a clear understanding of their safeguarding responsibilities, ensuring that they are fully qualified to coach children and vulnerable adults and provide safe environments for participation.
Across our courses and training sessions, we have so far seen 77 individuals take part since the start of the financial year 2024-2025, representing an increase of over 42% compared to the 54 participants up to the same point in financial year 2023-2024.
These courses are crucial to the safe provision of sport and physical activity in Wales, and WSA member Swim Wales, for example, have made it a pre-requisite for the instructors to take the courses before attending swim meets.
Other WSA safeguarding resources
Alongside the WSA’s DBS checking service and safeguarding courses, we host a range of safeguarding-related resources on our website.
From social media codes of conduct guidance to sports event safeguarding best practice, our range of resources are there to help sporting bodies, clubs and individuals make sport and leisure a safe place.
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