Minutes from the Games and Sports Division Meeting- 24 January 2017

2. CSPs

Lee Mason from CSPN introduced the role of the CSPs. The key points were: 

· Not-for-profit covering England

· The CSPs main role is funding and support. They distribute 16 million pounds into the local community.

· Insight and strategic brokering - the CSP is a useful first port of call.

· Marketing messages are driving communication networks to convey messages locally into the community.

· All CSPs have a safeguarding lead and have big databases of volunteers and coaches.

· They run national programmes that through their local network have real impact. 

· Workplace Challenge is a programme which has over 60k employees and over 1 million activities logged. 

Lee explained that a new core contract with Sport England is currently in development and moving forward it will be more customer focused.

This is now a great opportunity for Sport and Recreation Alliance members to feed into the future for the CSPs and Lee welcomes any thoughts or feedback.

CSP Network Presentation

3. VOLUNTEERING

Chantel Scherer (CS) fed back on the recently completed Join In volunteering research.  The key points to note are:

· Happy people volunteer!

· The Making Time research was carried out in 2015-2016 and provides a comprehensive look at the behavioral science around volunteering and in particular volunteering in sport. 

· Sports volunteers sometimes feel under recognised and underappreciated.

· Sport volunteers are more likely to stop volunteering than general volunteers, so sport needs to make them feel valued and appreciated in order to retain them.

· The GIVERS Framework is a useful guide for any organisation to grow their volunteer base. 

This research is available on the Join In website and the Alliance is considering how best to roll it out to the wider sector. The GIVERS framework is valuable and really useful in applying in your own organisation and clubs. 

Karen Tonge from the North West, who has a strong volunteering ethos, commented that volunteers need to have their out of pocket expenses paid and that volunteering in sport needs to come into line with other forms of volunteering to retain the good will and positivity of volunteers.

GIVERS Presentation

4. SPORT AND RECREATION ALLIANCE UPDATE

Emma Boggis (EB) updated the Division on the new strategy for the Alliance and the upcoming events that should be of interest to members; including the Mental Health Charter event taking place in the QE Olympic Park in March and the launch of Reconomics Plus on 3 February.

The general feedback from the members present was that it would be helpful for new organisations to have the opportunity to introduce themselves at divisional meetings and briefly talk about their background and the challenges they face in their organisation. 

It was suggested that there was assumed knowledge in the room, and so the point was made that additional context when discussing issues would be useful.

It was also noted that historically the Sport and Recreation Alliance has not communicated everything it has done as comprehensively at it could have, but that has certainly improved now and Emma’s Policy Updates are well received. 

5. ELECTIONS FOR THE NEXT CHAIR AND DEPUTY

There were only two candidates for the Chair and Deputy positions and thus both were duly welcomed into the roles. Janie Frampton is the new Chair and James Hope-Gill is the new Deputy Chair as of the AGM in July. 

John Boyd was thanked for his contribution to the Division for chairing his last meeting. 

6. SAFEGUARDING DISCUSSION AND Q&A

Jayne Molyneux from Sport England and Anne Tivas from the CPSU (Child Protection in Sport Unit) attended and presented on the work that has taken place off the back of the emergence in late 2016 of historical cases of abuse within football. 

The key points were: 

· There has been a Government response and now the task is to identify gaps in safeguarding and look at how to address them.

· Operation Hydrant (the police investigation into allegations of "non-recent" child sexual abuse) has reported that the current safeguarding processes that we have in place are working.

· DCMS have requested Sport England to review the current processes and identify any key gaps and what more can be done to educate parents.

Members were concerned that the smaller, unfunded sporting organisations had not been informed and that there was an issue reaching those that Sport England does not directly fund. Cheerleading commented that they “didn’t know where to go” when the story broke.

It was suggested and agreed that the next stage of communication to NGBs should come from the Minister and not from Sport England. 

It was agreed that Safeguarding was an integral part of Good Governance and not a bolt on. 

Safeguarding Presentation

7. DATE OF NEXT MEETING

The date of the next meeting for the Games and Sports Division, to be held at Farrer & Co, was confirmed as Friday 29 September 2017.

Minutes from the Games and Sports Division Meeting 24 January 2017

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