Rotherham United are lending our full support to Play Safe – a national FA-led campaign to raise awareness of the importance of safeguarding in football.
Play Safe is being run in partnership with the NSPCC and has the full backing of the Premier League, EFL, Barclays FA Women’s Super League and the FA Women’s Championship. It’s also supported and being run across every other level of the game.
The main element of Play Safe is a series of short films which emphasise the importance of clubs such as ours having safeguarding embedded in all that we do. The films also explain to parents/carers and children themselves know what to do if they feel unsafe or worried, because nothing matters more than making sure football is safe for everyone, especially children and young people. You can see these films on our club website and we’ve also broadcast them on our social media channels.
Alongside the assets provided by the FA and the EFL, the club will also be shining a light on all of the work that goes on behind-the-scenes to ensure that Rotherham United remains a safe environment for everyone to watch football in – with a focus on how we do that for those under the age of 18 and for vulnerable adults.
Our recent efforts to continue working on improving our safeguarding efforts has seen us revisit the safeguarding-specific section on our website to provide an all new and exclusive tab, behind which all of the contacts and information can be found. Beyond that, also included is a new ‘form’ which allows people to report incidents to us via our website.
You can check it out by clicking HERE.
Also contained within Saturday's matchday programme is an interview with our club Designated Safeguarding Officer Julie Shore, who tells us more about her role as we focus on supporting the Play Safe campaign.
“As a youth team coach, I will be working with my club to ensure we support the Play Safe messaging,” says FA Chief Executive Mark Bullingham. “I am also pleased that the campaign has the support of the former footballers with lived experience of abuse in football, who are on our Survivor Support and Safeguarding Advisory Group. The Group has collectively said:
“Learning from the past is crucial, so that we can prevent the horrific experiences that happened to us and so many others in football, from happening again.
“As a group of survivors, we fully support the ethos and important messages that Play Safe conveys – whether to club officials, parents/carers and or vitally, children and young people themselves. Equally important is that Play Safe is not a one-off campaign – it will be used at key points in the football calendar to remind everyone in football, that children’s welfare and keeping them safe, should be at the heart of all that we do.”
As the Survivor Group points out, you’ll see Play Safe appearing at various points throughout the season to keep safeguarding front of mind in football. Together, we want to do everything we can so everyone – particularly children and young people – has a consistently positive experience of our great game.