New Volunteers and Safeguarding

To contribute to the October newsletter, I wanted to update everyone on our new volunteers and safeguarding at Harlow Rugby club.

To open, I would like to say thank you to one of our longer serving volunteers. As some of you know Teresa Keane has stepped down from the Safeguarding lead role. She has been the club’s safeguarding lead for over 4 years. Teresa has done a wonderful job in ensuring Harlow rugby club has complied with the RFU safeguarding policy and annual audits through the years. We are going to miss her calm and methodical manner in dealing with difficult safeguarding issues. Teresa was rewarded with the Essex Valued Volunteer award on Saturday. We wish her all the best in the future.

Teresa Keane receiving her Essex valued volunteer award from Ivor Smith, Honorary Secretary

The good news is that Melanie White is taking over the role of safeguarding lead. Already, she has attended the five-hour Essex safeguarding conference at Romford rugby club and met the Essex safeguarding team. Plus, she is booked on to the Play it Safe course at Eton Manor RFC. She is looking forward to taking on the challenge of this very demanding role.

Melanie White & Steve Foreman at the Essex Safeguarding conference

It has been very pleasing to see the number of new volunteers looking to do admin, coaching and first aid roles in the mini’s section. Many of these are current and ex senior team players. Already I have processed 12 new volunteer applications and have at least another 10 volunteers to interview.

It was great to see 38 volunteers at a Play it Safe course held at the club in September. The aim of the course is to:

Provide a rugby-specific basic awareness of safeguarding and protecting children
Provide guidance on good practice that protects you when volunteering or working with children in rugby union.

These volunteers also completed the eLearning courses on the England RFU’s Game Management system (GMS).