Safeguarding, DBS and compliance for swimming clubs

A swimming club's safeguarding duties rest on records and boundaries: knowing every DBS check and safeguarding course is in date, that policies have been read, that adults and children communicate in the right ways, and that the welfare officer can see what they need to. Olympus Swim keeps those records in one place and builds the boundaries into the system, so compliance does not depend on one volunteer's inbox.

What the rules ask of a club

The detail differs by nation, but the shape is the same everywhere in the UK.

• In England, every club affiliated to Swim England must adopt Wavepower, Swim England's safeguarding policy and procedures. Swim England requires DBS checks for people in regulated roles to be renewed every three years, and child safeguarding training to be refreshed every three years.
• In Wales, Swim Wales asks every club to have a designated welfare officer and to renew DBS checks every three years.
• In Scotland, people in regulated roles join the Protecting Vulnerable Groups (PVG) scheme, with applications processed through Scottish Swimming.

None of that is hard to understand. The difficulty is keeping track of it for every coach, team manager, official and committee member, year after year, while the people doing the tracking change.

DBS checks and qualifications

Every person who needs a check has it recorded against their role, with its expiry date. Olympus Swim sends renewal alerts at 90, 60 and 30 days, so nothing expires quietly on someone's desk. The welfare officer sees at a glance how many checks are valid, expiring or urgent, and can export the register when the club needs to evidence it.

Coach qualifications sit alongside, so the head coach knows what each coach holds and when anything needs renewing.

Read more: DBS renewals in a swimming club.

Policies people have actually read

The policy hub holds the club's policies with version control. When a policy changes, members acknowledge the new version, and the club can see who has and who has not. Parents acknowledge policies from the parent portal as part of the normal flow, not on a paper form at the poolside.

Messaging with boundaries built in

Most safeguarding worries about club communication come from messaging that sits outside the club's control, in personal phones and group chats nobody oversees. In Olympus Swim the boundaries are part of the system:

• Coaches cannot exchange private messages with swimmers under 18.
• A swimmer's own login cannot send or receive messages at all.
• The welfare officer can read every thread, and that access is itself logged.
• Messages cannot be edited or deleted once sent.
• Threads can be exported if the club ever needs to evidence what was said.

Read more: squad WhatsApp groups and safeguarding.

Access that follows the role

People see what their role needs and nothing more. Olympus Swim has eleven roles, from chair and treasurer to coach, meet secretary, welfare lead, parent and swimmer. A treasurer can chase an invoice without seeing a child's medical notes. A meet secretary can enter a gala without seeing welfare records. Every change to the club's records is written to a governance audit log.

Data protection for children's records

The platform is hosted in the UK, encrypted in transit and at rest, and each club's data is kept separate. The first time a parent signs in, they accept the privacy policy and answer the consent questions for each child before anything else opens, and every answer is recorded with a timestamp. Subject access exports are built in, and an erasure request is reviewed and signed off by the club's chair before anything is deleted, because the right to erasure is not absolute and the club needs to consider whether an exemption applies.

What Olympus Swim does not do

Olympus Swim is not a safeguarding reporting system and does not receive or act on safeguarding concerns. Concerns go to the club's welfare officer and through the club's and the governing body's own procedures. The platform keeps the records and boundaries in order so the people doing that work have what they need.

Read next: the welfare officer's routine, poolside registers, coaching tools and about Olympus Swim.

Common questions

How often do DBS checks need renewing in a swimming club? Swim England and Swim Wales both require DBS checks for regulated roles to be renewed every three years. In Scotland, people in regulated roles join the PVG scheme through Scottish Swimming.

Can coaches message children on Olympus Swim? No. Coaches cannot exchange private messages with swimmers under 18, and swimmer logins cannot send or receive messages.

Who can see a swimmer's medical information? Only the club's coaches, its welfare lead and its chair and vice-chair, and only where the parent has agreed the club may record it. The treasurer, the meet secretary and general committee members never see it.

Does Olympus Swim replace our welfare officer? No. It gives the welfare officer the records, alerts and oversight they need. Safeguarding decisions stay with people.

Is our data held in the UK? Yes. The primary database is hosted in the UK and encrypted in transit and at rest.