The COVID-19  crisis continues to provide unique challenges to all of us in our community and has certainly shifted much of our efforts to responding to the evolving government restrictions; however, through this time, our organizational commitment to safe sport has not diminished.

This past summer, we continued with our roll out of the CKC Safe Sport Policy which was passed by the CKC Board of Directors in February. Since this time, the policy has been in force, and the mechanisms for dealing with reporting and properly addressing Maltreatment, Harassment and Abuse within our CKC system have been operating. Details of our CKC Safe Sport Policy and approach and contact information for our Independent Safe Sport Officer are available here. Through this process, valuable feedback from our membership has been collected and changes in the national landscape have arisen which have led us, as CKC Staff, to make a recommendation to the Board of Directors to revise certain elements of our CKC Safe Sport Policy.

The proposed revisions will include:

1. Clarification within the Screening Policy around which roles in our community will require which level of Screening and Education.
2. Integration of the newly released Safe Sport Training module developed by the Coaching Association of Canada into the Screening Policy.
3. Creation of an independent screening process, to be managed by a CKC-mandated independent third party which will relieve member organizations from bearing this responsibility.
4. Facilitation of the revised screening process through ckcmember.ca.

We are moving forward with these proposed revisions and expect them to be passed shortly. The phase we are now entering is one of education and support to our membership in adopting the CKC Safe Sport Policy within their own organizations. To facilitate this process, a membership declaration has been created and we are targeting December 1, 2020 as the date by which members will have adopted the CKC Safe Sport Policies within their own organization, as well as the target to understand and comply with screening and educational requirements.

We will be following up with further information, including planned webinars in October, further education as part of our Virtual Annual Summit and on-going support ahead of next season.

In the meantime, our Safe Sport Policy is in force, and our Independent Safe Sport Officer is available to contact for complaints or questions requiring independence. If you have any further questions regarding the Policy itself, or any of CKC’s safe sport initiatives or programs, please contact Ian Mortimer, Director of Development.