Purpose
Champion Taekwondo Academy is committed to providing a safe environment for every child and young person who participates in our classes, training sessions, grading examinations, competitions, camps, events, demonstrations, travel, and other Academy activities.
The Academy places the safety, dignity, welfare, and rights of children at the centre of its safeguarding practices.
This policy establishes the standards expected of instructors, assistant instructors, volunteers, students, parents, guardians, contractors, and other persons working with or around children through Champion Taekwondo Academy.
Legal and safeguarding framework
This policy is guided primarily by Bermuda's Children Act 1998, including subsequent amendments, and the Child Safeguarding (Miscellaneous Amendments) Act 2019.
Section 20 of the Children Act 1998 establishes mandatory reporting requirements. A person performing professional or official duties concerning a child, including a youth or recreational leader, who has reasonable grounds to suspect a child is suffering or has suffered significant harm must report the suspicion and supporting information to the Director of Child and Family Services.
The duty applies even where information would otherwise be confidential, subject to the specific legal exception for solicitor-client privilege. The Act also protects the identity of a person who makes a report under section 20 and provides protection from civil action unless a report was made falsely and maliciously.
The Child Safeguarding reforms strengthened Bermuda's framework for protecting children from sexual exploitation and sexual abuse. They also specifically recognized the importance of safeguarding awareness among people who regularly work with children in sport, culture, and leisure activities.
Champion Taekwondo Academy also recognizes Bermuda's National Child Safeguarding Policy, Working Together to Safeguard Children. The national approach emphasizes child-centred safeguarding, cooperation between agencies, information sharing, and appropriate risk assessment.
Scope
This policy applies to all Champion Taekwondo Academy activities involving persons under 18.
The policy applies to instructors, assistant instructors, volunteers, visiting instructors, officials, contractors, parents or guardians acting on behalf of the Academy, and adult students placed in positions of responsibility involving children.
The policy applies inside and outside the dojang, including competitions, demonstrations, seminars, transportation arranged by the Academy, social activities, overnight trips, online activities, and Academy communications.
Safeguarding principles
Champion Taekwondo Academy will:
- Put the welfare and safety of children first.
- Treat every child with dignity and respect.
- Provide an environment free from abuse, harassment, bullying, exploitation, discrimination, and inappropriate conduct.
- Take safeguarding concerns seriously.
- Respond promptly when concerns arise.
- Report suspected significant harm in accordance with Bermuda law.
- Limit information about safeguarding cases to people with a legitimate need to know.
- Maintain appropriate boundaries between adults and children.
- Never allow sporting achievement, rank, competition results, reputation, or loyalty to the Academy to take priority over a child's welfare.
Definition of a child
For this policy, a child is a person under 18 years of age.
Bermuda's 2019 safeguarding reforms established a consistent definition of a child as a person under 18 for the relevant safeguarding provisions.
Forms of harm
Safeguarding concerns include physical abuse, sexual abuse or exploitation, emotional or psychological abuse, neglect, bullying, cyberbullying, grooming, inappropriate sexual behaviour, harassment, coercion, discrimination, exposure to inappropriate material, and other conduct placing a child's health, development, dignity, or safety at risk.
A concern does not need to arise inside Champion Taekwondo Academy.
An instructor who becomes concerned about harm occurring at home, school, online, in another sporting organisation, or elsewhere must follow this policy.
Mandatory reporting
All Champion instructors, assistant instructors, and other persons performing relevant youth or recreational duties must understand their reporting responsibilities.
Where a person has reasonable grounds to suspect a child is suffering or has suffered significant harm, the matter must be reported promptly to the Director of Child and Family Services in accordance with section 20 of the Children Act 1998.
An instructor must not delay a legally required report while waiting for:
- Proof of abuse.
- Permission from a parent.
- Permission from Master Johnson.
- An internal Academy investigation.
- Confirmation from another instructor.
- The child to repeat the allegation.
- The suspected person to provide an explanation.
The legal threshold in section 20 for persons performing professional or official duties is reasonable grounds for suspicion.
Child disclosures
If a child discloses abuse or another serious safeguarding concern, the person receiving the disclosure should remain calm and listen.
Do not interrogate the child.
Do not ask leading questions.
Do not promise secrecy.
Do not confront the alleged offender.
Do not conduct your own investigation.
Explain to the child, in age-appropriate language, that information relating to their safety needs to be shared with people responsible for protecting them.
Record what the child said as accurately as possible. Separate the child's words from your own observations or conclusions.
Record the date, time, location, people present, and relevant circumstances.
Take required reporting action promptly.
Immediate danger
Where a child faces an immediate threat to life or safety, protecting the child takes priority.
Emergency services should be contacted where necessary.
The person responding should then follow the Academy's safeguarding reporting process and any legal reporting obligations.
Designated safeguarding lead
Champion Taekwondo Academy will appoint a Designated Safeguarding Lead.
The Safeguarding Lead will coordinate the Academy's safeguarding procedures, maintain appropriate records, support staff training, review safeguarding risks, and help ensure this policy is followed.
The Safeguarding Lead does not replace the legal duty of an individual who is required to make a report under the Children Act 1998.
No internal reporting procedure should delay a legally required report.
Instructor and volunteer conduct
Adults working with children must maintain clear professional boundaries.
Adults must not engage in sexualized conversation, sexual contact, grooming behaviour, humiliating punishment, threatening conduct, bullying, harassment, inappropriate physical contact, or private relationships with children which breach appropriate adult-child boundaries.
Discipline must relate to legitimate Taekwondo instruction and safety.
Physical exercise must never be used to humiliate, intimidate, or deliberately harm a child.
An instructor must never strike a student as punishment.
Physical contact in Taekwondo
Taekwondo involves physical instruction. Appropriate physical contact occurs during pad work, sparring, self-defence training, stretching, stance correction, partner drills, first aid, and other legitimate training activities.
Instructors must keep physical contact appropriate to the activity.
Where practical, explain a physical correction before making contact.
Contact must have a legitimate instructional, safety, or first-aid purpose.
Instructors must respect a child's discomfort and use verbal or visual instruction where appropriate.
One-to-one contact
Adults should avoid unnecessarily isolated one-to-one situations with children.
Where individual instruction is required, training should take place in an observable area where practical.
Doors should remain open or visibility should be maintained when circumstances permit.
Parents or guardians should have reasonable access to observe training, subject to operational and safety requirements.
Changing areas and toilets
Adults must respect children's privacy.
Instructors should avoid entering changing areas being used by children unless there is a legitimate safety, supervision, or emergency reason.
Where intervention is required, reasonable steps should be taken to protect the child's dignity and maintain appropriate adult supervision.
Photography and video recording are prohibited in changing areas and toilets.
Digital communication
Academy communications with children must remain professional and relate to legitimate Academy activities.
Where practical, communication involving younger students should go through a parent or guardian.
Instructors must not use disappearing messages, secret accounts, sexualized messages, or inappropriate private conversations when communicating with students.
Safeguarding standards apply to social media, messaging platforms, email, video calls, and other digital communications.
Photography and video
Champion Taekwondo Academy uses photography and video for training, events, competition coverage, Academy promotion, and recognition of student achievement.
The Academy should obtain appropriate parent or guardian consent for promotional use involving children.
Images must not portray children in a degrading, sexualized, or inappropriate manner.
Images taken for Academy purposes must be handled responsibly.
No photography or recording is permitted in toilets or changing areas.
Transportation and travel
Where Champion arranges transportation or travel involving children, reasonable safeguarding measures must be established.
Parents or guardians should receive relevant travel information.
Adults responsible for students must maintain appropriate professional boundaries throughout the trip.
Sleeping and changing arrangements for overnight activities must protect children's privacy and safety.
Bullying
Champion Taekwondo Academy does not accept bullying.
This includes physical bullying, verbal abuse, intimidation, exclusion, hazing, discriminatory behaviour, online bullying, threats, and misuse of martial arts skills against another person.
Students should report bullying to an instructor.
Instructors must respond to reports rather than dismissing conduct as normal training behaviour.
Use of martial arts skills
Students are taught Taekwondo for personal development, sport, fitness, confidence, discipline, and legitimate self-protection.
Students must not use their training to bully, intimidate, threaten, or deliberately harm another person.
Serious misuse of martial arts skills is subject to disciplinary action.
Allegations against an instructor or volunteer
Any allegation involving an instructor, assistant instructor, volunteer, or other adult associated with Champion must be treated seriously.
The Academy will focus first on the safety of the child.
A person who is the subject of an allegation must not investigate the allegation.
Where the circumstances create a safeguarding risk, Champion may remove the person from child-contact duties while the matter is referred to the appropriate authority and reviewed.
An internal employment or disciplinary process must not replace or delay a legally required safeguarding report.
Confidentiality
Safeguarding information must be handled carefully.
Information should be shared with appropriate authorities and people who have a legitimate safeguarding or legal need for the information.
Section 20 of the Children Act specifically restricts disclosure of the identity of a person who reports information under the mandatory reporting provisions.
Staff must not discuss safeguarding cases with students, other parents, friends, or people without a legitimate role in the matter.
Record keeping
Safeguarding records should contain factual information.
Records should include the date and time of the concern, nature of the concern, child's words where applicable, observations, actions taken, persons notified, reports made to authorities, and relevant follow-up.
Safeguarding records should receive appropriate security and access controls.
Safer recruitment
Champion will take reasonable steps to assess the suitability of people placed in positions involving children.
Safeguarding suitability should form part of instructor and volunteer selection.
Bermuda's safeguarding framework specifically addresses the suitability of professionals who have regular contact with children and restrictions relating to persons recorded on relevant abuse or offender registers.
Training
Instructors and relevant volunteers should receive safeguarding education appropriate to their responsibilities.
Training should cover recognizing abuse, responding to disclosures, mandatory reporting, professional boundaries, physical contact in sport, digital communication, bullying, record keeping, and this policy.
Safeguarding should form part of the induction process for new instructors and assistant instructors.
Parents and guardians
Parents and guardians are expected to support Champion's safeguarding standards.
Parents should provide accurate emergency and medical contact information, inform the Academy about relevant safety concerns, follow collection and supervision arrangements, and raise concerns promptly.
A parent who has a concern about the conduct of an instructor should report the matter to the Academy's Safeguarding Lead. Where the concern involves suspected significant harm, Bermuda's statutory reporting requirements apply.
Student rights
Every child at Champion has the right to:
- Feel safe during training.
- Be treated with respect.
- Say when something makes them uncomfortable.
- Report bullying or inappropriate behaviour.
- Speak to an instructor or trusted adult about a concern.
- Receive appropriate help when they disclose a safeguarding concern.
- Participate without being subjected to abuse, exploitation, harassment, or degrading treatment.
Non-retaliation
No student, parent, instructor, or volunteer should suffer retaliation for raising a genuine safeguarding concern or making a report in good faith.
Champion will treat retaliation, intimidation, or attempts to silence a safeguarding concern as a serious matter.
Policy breaches
Breaches of this policy may result in measures including increased supervision, removal from particular duties, suspension from Academy activities, termination of an instructor or volunteer role, termination of membership, or referral to the appropriate authorities.
The response will depend on the circumstances and must not interfere with a statutory investigation.
Policy review
Champion Taekwondo Academy will review this policy at least annually and following a serious safeguarding incident, material change in Bermuda law, or significant change in Academy operations.
Commitment
Champion Taekwondo Academy recognizes that teaching children martial arts carries a responsibility extending beyond technical instruction.
Every instructor, assistant instructor, volunteer, parent, and student has a role in maintaining a safe training environment.
Where there is a conflict between sporting interests and the safety of a child, the child's safety and welfare take priority.
Approved by:
Master Edmond Johnson
Head Instructor
Champion Taekwondo Academy
Date: __________________
Signature: __________________