Alberta Golf Safe Sport Task Force Announcement
Alberta Golf (Calgary) –
The Board of Directors at Alberta Golf have spent considerable time this fall reviewing several recommendations that have been brought forward by staff and volunteers to deal with issues raised following Alberta Golf events this past summer.
Of note are three important issues involving competitors being accused of cheating and verbally abusing volunteers as well as allegations of parents becoming involved in bullying behaviours.
As such, the Board of Directors has approved the formation of a Safe Sport Task Force to conduct a thorough review and provide recommendations for implementation in the spring of 2021.
The mandate of the Safe Sport Task Force will be as follows:
- Conduct a comprehensive review of all policies, procedures and documented incidents on file;
- Conduct meetings with Golf Canada, the Respect Group and Alberta Sport in the development of best practice guidelines;
- Reach out to other sport organizations and subject matter experts as necessary for additional resources and support;
- Conduct solution-based interviews with individual competitors and focus groups;
- Provide recommendations that expand upon Alberta Golf’s current Respect in Sport initiatives to include the introduction of Safe Sport programming.
Issues will always be prevalent in competitive sport, particularly amongst our youth and adolescents, and our intention is to do as much as possible to mitigate them. We have an expectation that parents will be participants in the solution, not the underlying problem. Following the discovery phase of this initiative Alberta Golf will be committing a significant amount of resources in the development of materials to support a well thought out communication strategy.
The objective of this strategy will be to ensure Alberta Golf events remain a safe environment for all competitors. As an industry-leading Association in our country, Alberta Golf intends to expand upon our existing relationship with the Respect Group by providing all participants with more education on these issues. We will also be soliciting the support from our entire field of competitors at every event to help identify and address negative behaviours for the benefit of all golfers.
For more information regarding this initiative please contact our CEO, Phil Berube at 403.236.4616 or by email: phil@albertagolf.org
