The International Tennis Federation (ITF) is the governing body of world tennis, wheelchair tennis, and beach tennis. Founded in 1913 by twelve national tennis associations, the ITF’s membership comprises 213 national members and six regional associations.
The ITF runs six Tours, with 3,000 competitive events a year worldwide for up to 60,000 registered and active players of all ages and abilities, with events in around 15 different countries each week.
The objective
The ITF was looking for digital safeguarding solutions that could support their Safeguarding Strategy and Policies to promote safe and inclusive environments for all children and adults participating in international tennis. A difficult task, given the geographical complexity involved.
Based in the UK with a global responsibility, the ITF decided that a secure online case management system was required to record, manage and track safeguarding concerns as they were reported.
As an international federation for sport, the ITF also recruits staff from countries worldwide to work with children and young people participating in tennis activities and therefore needed a way of managing a safer recruitment and workforce development programme.
The solution - Tes MyConcern
The solutions the ITF chose were ‘MyConcern’, for recording and management of safeguarding cases and ‘Sentry’, in support of the safer recruitment and workforce development process.
ITF Safeguarding Manager, Gary Bye said, “‘MyConcern’ is the first safeguarding case management system the ITF has introduced and has enabled us as a team to have everything securely retained and digitally accessible in one place. We can track the progress of each case, easily retrieve any associated information and run specific reports as required.”
Safer recruitment is a critical element to safeguarding and internationally can often be complex. The Safeguarding Team works closely with the ITF HR Department in the recruitment of ITF staff who work in roles requiring enhanced levels of checks.
Gary went on to say: “Utilising the ‘Sentry’ data system has been key to managing elements of safer recruitment. ‘Sentry’ provides an easy-to-follow workflow for the essential checks that the ITF completes, including DBS and Overseas Criminal Records Checks. The system has enabled us to develop an auditable Single Central Record detailing the staff safeguarding training records alongside their background check information.”
The outcome
“’MyConcern’ and ‘Sentry’ have worked really well for us,” Gary added. “The contractual and implementation processes were straightforward, and all our Team received training, ensuring that we were able to start using the systems immediately. We are very pleased with the added resilience that MyConcern and Sentry have provided in the development of our safeguarding systems.”
