Over the last 10 years, Australia’s sporting landscape has changed dramatically. After a series of national and international scandals, from the Essendon supplements saga to the Athlete A documentary, the days of sports solely making and enforcing their own rules are gone.
Today, sporting organisations are under more pressure than ever before to adhere to the principles of sports integrity. Spurred by two major reviews, in 2020, the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority, the National Integrity of Sport Unit and the national integrity programs within Sports Australia were consolidated to become Sport Integrity Australia (SIA). In 2021, SIA rolled out a National Integrity Framework to govern behaviour and conduct across national sports.
Now, the UTS Centre for Sport, Business and Society (CSBS) is supporting sports organisations to better manage their integrity responsibilities with two new professional education courses: Sport Integrity Management and Safeguarding in Sport.
An evolving integrity landscape
The National Integrity Framework represents a robust step forward in terms of sporting governance — but it can’t address every integrity challenge that sporting organisations may encounter.
“Every sport in Australia now has a focus on integrity and should have policies in four key areas: anti-doping, anti-corruption, member protection and child safeguarding,” says Mat Jessep, a sports lawyer, sports integrity consultant and the founder of Game Legal. Jessep will deliver the Sport Integrity Management course.
“Beyond the regulated areas of integrity, there are other issues such as athlete abuse, trans rights, climate change, sportswashing, concussion, and player and fan behaviour. If a sport just looks at it as the four policies under the framework, they're ticking the compliance needs of Sport Integrity Australia, they're getting their funding, but that doesn't reduce their overall risk of integrity threats.”
Similar complexities are unfolding in the child safeguarding space, which refers to keeping children and young people safe when they play sport. According to Samantha Dellamarta, a child safeguarding specialist and the founder of Dellamarta Consulting, sporting organisations face a range of complexities in trying to make sense of, and implement, safeguarding rules.
“It’s the national sporting organisation that has access to the Framework and the resources and education that come with it,” says Dellamarta, who will deliver the Safeguarding in Sport course.
“But kids play sport in a whole range of places, not just under the auspices of national-level organisations like Swimming Australia or Hockey Australia. They have private coaches, they play for private clubs, they play for regional academies and for schools. So, there’s a whole range of environments within which children play sport that aren't all governed by SIA but are still required to comply with state and territory safeguarding laws.”
Preparing sports organisations for the future
The two new CSBS courses are designed to prepare sporting organisations to meet their integrity responsibilities within and beyond the SIA Framework. Part of the Institute for Public Policy and Governance (IPPG), a leading research centre with a focus on driving excellence in public policy, CSBS is the latest step in UTS’s evolution as a trailblazer in sports education and research.
The Sport Integrity Management course will supplement the high-quality learning and resources that are already on offer from SIA. The course will provide a broad view of navigating and managing sport integrity issues that don’t fit neatly into an existing policy.
“Integrity is everyone's job in sport — it's not just the chair or the president or the board or the committee or the CEO of a sporting organisation,” Jessep says.
“Everyone has a job to ensure that their sport — at the organisational level, the competitive level, the individual level — is committed to protecting and upholding integrity. This course is very broad in terms of its appeal.”
The Safeguarding in Sport course will cover the National Framework and state-based standards for organisations that fall outside of SIA’s remit. It will be aimed at staff from national sporting organisations, peak sports bodies, institutes of sport and regional academies of sport.
Participants will be introduced to safeguarding in sport and the preventative measures and response strategies that can improve the safety and wellbeing outcomes of children, young people and athletes.
“SIA created a policy for all sports, but sports still needed to understand what it means for them and how to apply it,” says Dellamarta.
“This course will be a really explicit conversation that says this is what you have to do, this is what it looks like and here's how you can do it.”
| Learn to identify and mitigate sporting integrity issues in your organisation with Sports Integrity Management and Safeguarding in Sport, two short courses from the UTS Centre for Sport, Business and Society (CSBS). Designed and delivered by sporting integrity experts, these courses can prepare your organisation to meet and exceed the requirements of the National Integrity Framework. |
