Changing Hazing and Negative Group Events in Sport (CHANGES)
For a number of years, SSS has worked with Professor Moira Lafferty from the University of Chester to tackle the challenges of initiation and hazing activity within student sport. For the fourth time we will be running a ‘Train the Trainer’ course on the 14th November 2024. Sign up here. The CHANGES: Train the Trainer programme is designed to up-skill staff in the tertiary education network to deliver awareness workshops to clubs.
The course will be delivered by Moira whose extensive research highlights the advantages of having external staff deliver the CHANGES workshops to student clubs. The overall aim is to be in a position where we have developed a large enough workforce so that institutions are able to support one another to train up all our 614 clubs in the network.
Kyniska Advocacy
At SSS, we have had the pleasure of working closely with Kyniska Advocacy on a Special Projects Fund project to support and upskill staff and students on the critical topics of welfare and wellbeing within student sport. The aim of the project was to deliver training resources, reporting procedure guidelines and bespoke resources for member institutions.
Each institution that engaged went through a consultation phase where Mhairi Maclennan, CEO of Kyniska Advocacy, met with staff. Following this, a bespoke, comprehensive and holistically approached Wellbeing and Welfare guide was created for students in their institution. The resource is centred on creating cultural change through organisation-wide education on wellbeing and welfare in student sport. It takes a human-rights based approach to fostering safe and sustainable experiences in student sport, setting out a ‘gold-standard’ reference for how to approach and tackle abuse.
The next phase of the project is a training day for staff from member institutions. At this five-hour workshop, Mhairi will deliver a comprehensive exploration of the topics discussed in the guides and include group work and workshops to fully equip staff to handle complaints.
This vitally important work is ongoing and ever developing as we move towards a safer space in student sport.