Welcome to the Nottingham Portland Swimming Club. We hope you will have an enjoyable and happy time as a swimmer at our Club and that you make many new friends and enjoy training and competing with us. Your parents have been given a letter with details about the Club. This letter is to give you some additional information you may find helpful now or in the future.
Coaching
We, as an ASA Swim21 Club, are committed to help you to enjoy your swimming, learn to train hard and achieve your potential. The coaches are here to help you do that and have been trained to do so in a safe and proper manner. You should soon get to know your coach and if you have any concerns about training do talk this over with your coach and your parents.
Safeguarding
You may wonder what we mean by Safeguarding. Basically, alongside our wish for you to enjoy and succeed at your swimming, we want to ensure you are safe and happy in the Club and that we act upon anything that prevents that. So, by way of an example, we want to make sure you are not being bullied, treated differently to others, hurt by another person on purpose or ignored.
Preventing such behaviour is very important to us as a Club and to achieve that we have a safeguarding policy called Wavepower. If you want to have a look at Wavepower the Club Welfare Officer will have a copy or it can be viewed and downloaded from http://www.swimming.org/asa/clubs-and-members/safeguarding-children/. Wavepower has a section (Section 5) specifically for swimmers that the ASA’s Youth Forum has helped to write, which you may find interesting to read.
We know any bullying or poor behaviour towards you would make you feel unhappy, so please do not feel you have to just put up with it. While we will do all we can to prevent anything happening, it is important if something or someone causes you to be unhappy you tell someone. Tell your parent, your coach, the Club Welfare Officer or any other adult you feel happy to speak to. Any issues you raise will be dealt with.
To assist you, here are some helpful details of how you can raise concerns:
- Your Club Welfare Officers are Janine Ferlinc & Nicola Lowes. They can be contacted by email at [email protected] or you can ask to talk to them at a training session.
- The Swim England also has a helpline called Swimline, if you want to tell someone but not anyone in the Club. The number is 0808 100 4001.You will be asked to leave a number at which you can be contacted in the next 24 hours. If you feel you cannot wait that long for someone to talk to you, hang on and you will be put through to the NSPCC/ChildLine helpline number who will answer your call immediately.
- You can call Childline direct on 0800 1111 or go to childline.org.uk for Online Chat with a counsellor – it works like instant messenger.
- Child Power is a section of the Swim England website just for young people. It has a message link that you can send a concern in writing to the ASA Safeguarding Team, who will then help you with whatever issue you have raised.
- Fill out the Your Voice section of the Child Power leaflet – take one from the noticeboard at the pool. You can put your concern in writing and give it to a parent or trusted adult in the Club, if you can’t tell anyone directly.
Codes of conduct
Just as we expect others to behave properly to you, we expect all our swimmers to behave in an appropriate manner to their coaches, all club helpers, fellow swimmers and all adults and young people you have contact with in training and at competitions. We have a code of conduct that you and your parents will be asked to sign and return to the Club. If you are unsure about any aspect of the code of conduct please feel free to ask.
We hope you will have a very happy and successful time while a member of the Nottingham Portland Swimming Club.
