8 December 2016 | Tennis Victoria

From 1 January 2017 the Victoria Child Safety Standards apply to clubs/centres, associations and coaching businesses. These principle based standards are initially focused on policy, education and capacity building.

Fact Sheet

Tennis Victoria’s guide – updated with newly available resources – to working towards meeting the Child Safety Standards is available here.

Child Safe Policy

Standard #2 – A child safe policy or statement of commitment to child safety has recently been addressed by Tennis Australia and Tennis Victoria on behalf of all of Victorian tennis, through an update to the national Member Protection Policy.  

This national policy is automatically binding on all affiliates, and their registered participants and coaches. We encourage your committee to familiarise itself with the content of the policy.

Further support

As previously noted, Tennis Australia has engaged the Australian Childhood Foundation (ACF) to conduct a national review to help implement best practice standards across the entire sport. This review is almost complete, and following consideration of the recommendations from the ACF, Tennis Australia plans on developing resources for release in early 2017 to support clubs. These resources will also assist clubs in the process of meeting the Victorian Child Safety Standards.

Next steps

The ingrained child safe culture that the Child Safety Standards seek to promote do not occur overnight. As a first step we encourage clubs to discuss this topic – with the Tennis Victoria Fact Sheet as a guide – at their next committee meeting. We also strongly encourage that your club’s coach is invited to attend this part of the meeting, so that you can develop a united approach to child safety at your venue.

Questions

If your club has any queries regarding the above, please contact Tim McGrath (Acting Business Operations Manager) via [email protected] or 8420 8414.