The Future of Safeguarding in Sport

The idiom ‘prevention is better than cure’ is never more apparent than when applied to the abuse and neglect of children. In recent decades, prevailing attitudes about child abuse have shifted, reflecting a turn to a more holistic approach to safeguarding and an increasing demand that organizations explicitly recognize children’s rights. This chapter discusses the degree to which this agenda has been adopted within national sport systems, and highlights particular initiatives that illustrate the sport sectors’ engagement with these wider concerns. It also identifies elements of resistance, and urges a shift in the way sport and other sectors consider abuse, suggesting that research must be prepared to (further) engage in rigorous and substantial socio-cultural analyses of the myriad of sports environments that children and young people encounter.