Review clears former COSC Coaches of any safeguarding concerns

Posted on June 12, 2021

As the former coaching staff at City of Oxford SC (COSC), Amanda Booth, Mikey Hire, Fabian Whitbread, Zichen Liu & Matt Croyle, prepare to start exciting new projects (more of which soon), the BSCA is aware of a report drafted in the light of the matters that the Association has previously reported upon.

As a reminder, on 1st April at the COSC SGM, the Club Secretary publicly suggested that there were serious safeguarding concerns in relation to the coaching staff who at that time were still in situ at the Club and who had been suspended.
A further statement was issued by the City of Oxford Swimming Club committee on April 6th, within which it suggested that ".. the allegations relating to welfare concerns are now in the hands of Swim England."
Additionally, the Club stated "Swim England were already investigating certain welfare matters relating to the Club".

The BSCA has always disputed that this was the case. These statements have since been reviewed by a respected individual in the field of Child Safeguarding on behalf of the National Governing Body (NGB). Their review report stated the following in relation to the comments made above: "This is a false and misleading statement to members and the public."

The report concluded that: “COSC were responsible for publishing reports or accounts that were false or misleading, in respect of the suggestion that Swim England were actively investigating Child Welfare concerns. There is (was) no evidence, under Wavepower or Swim England guidance, that any coach represented a risk of harm to a child." The Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) also supports this opinion.

The report made recommendations to both Swim England & COSC.
It recommended that COSC provide a written confirmation to members and publish on their website that there is no current Child Safeguarding investigation, to clearly correct their previous false statement.

It has been roughly 6 weeks since the BSCA had sight of the report, we presume that COSC would have received such at the same time. We therefore waited this reasonable length of time to see the recommendations of their NGB, be enacted by the Club.

To date COSC has not implemented the stated recommendations & the document containing the false & misleading statements remains on their website.

Hopefully this clarifies why the BSCA supported its coaching members in taking the action they did as well as highlighting the behaviours of those in positions of authority at COSC, making such statements on behalf of the Club & who still remain in post.