The duty of care for community sporting clubs is a term that is often thrown around, but what does it actually mean and what does it look like?
A clubs Duty of Care can be broken down into 3 main areas:
Injury Prevention
This involves such things as:
- The state of the playing field, courts or training surfaces are safe. Typically this is mitigated with an inspection of the surface to ensure there are no hazards and where there are, the necessary steps are taken to mitigate the hazard risks.
- Equipment that is supplied by the club is maintained and fit for purpose.
- Safe Training and Supervision, where coaches don’t conduct dangerous drills or play that goes against the sports safety code
Incident Response and First Aid
- First Aid is provided by suitably qualified people, who have access to first aid kits, ice and life saving equipment such as an Automated External Defibrillator (AED). Medical equipment should be suitable for the sport being played.
- Enforcing Concussion & Medical Protocols of the relevant sporting code are to be strictly followed. Athletes must be removed from play if there are any signs of concussion or other injury.
Post Injury & Return to Play
- Return to Play Liability - where a club official pressures an injured athlete to return to play before being appropriately cleared by a medical professional, the official and club may be held liable for any prolonged damage.
- Incident Documentation - Clubs must formally document every injury (moderate to severe), to create a clear time line of events, details of how the injury occurred, treatment provided and any witnesses. This may be crucial for any future insurance or other claims
- Insurance Protection - clubs are required to hold public liability insurance to protect the club's committee from financial legal claims. Clubs may also wish to provide personal accident insurance for athletes to help cover any out of pocket expenses.
AthHQ helps clubs fulfill the following with their duty of care accountability
- Injury Prevention - workload oversight helps clubs monitor and manage an athletes workload to prevent injury
- Enforcing Protocols - AthHQ creates Concussion Management Plans to support and enforce safe return to play, guidance and check points to ensure the athlete has fully recovered from concussions.
- Incident Documentation - AthHQ captures all the relevant information about an injury, that not only provides legal protection for the club, but supports the priority of the health and wellbeing of the athlete.
AthHQ provides the athlete with an “Athlete Injury Passport”.