News & Updates

On behalf of Athletics New Zealand, I want to inform you of initiatives we are taking to ensure a safe environment for everyone in our sport, particularly children, young people and vulnerable adults.

As you may be aware, Athletics NZ and the 11 centres have made positive changes to help ensure a safe environment, including establishment of our Accredited Coach, Community Coach and Community Volunteer Memberships. More recently, with the support of our centres, and following the 50-day consultation process, we have introduced the requirement for all centre team managers and other official team support members to hold one of these three membership types – all of which include police vetting and child safety education.

We recommend to all athletics members to preferentially engage with, or utilise, coaches who hold Athletics NZ Accredited Coach Membership or Community Coach Membership. We believe this is an important next step in ensuring we are doing all that is practical to promote the safety of our members.

We communicated with your centre and club last week strengthening our recommendation that they only engage with, endorse or utilise coaches who hold a current Athletics NZ Accredited Coach Membership or Community Coach Membership. We also recently sent a separate communication to our coach database, letting coaches know of our strengthened recommendation. We are actively working to engage with coaches who have not yet applied for either a Community Coach or Accredited Coach Membership and will support those coaches to become members as quickly as possible.

To view lists of the Accredited Coaches and Community Coach Members, please click here

Some key elements of the Athletics NZ Accredited and Community Coach Memberships include:

• Accredited Coaches and Community Coach Members are police vetted at no cost to clubs, centres, coaches or athletes
• Accredited and Community Coach Members are required to undertake child safety education, which explains how to establish and maintain clear professional boundaries with children and young people in sport
• It establishes coaches as formal members of Athletics NZ, ensuring they are covered under our insurance and fall under the various regulations and policies
• Accredited and Community Coach Members sign the Athletics NZ Code of Conduct, agreeing to abide by behavioural guidelines within our sport
• It enables us, as the national organisation, to liaise directly with coaches to support their ongoing education and development needs

If you are currently coached by someone who is not an Accredited Coach or Community Coach Member, we encourage you to support them in becoming a member in the coming weeks. Coach Membership is necessary to help ensure we are collectively delivering a safe sporting experience for our members.

To register as an Accredited Coach Member, Community Coach Member or Community Volunteer Member, please click here

We are actively looking at what more we should do to ensure our sport is safe for all and taking advice from our Club Child/Youth Safety working group, which includes representatives from five clubs. The recommendations from the working group include providing information for coaches, team managers, parents and athletes on acceptable behaviours in our sport and how to report unacceptable behaviour and we are currently working on developing this information.

We have also commissioned a legal specialist with experience in member protection and child safety to review our current policies and regulations and advise us of any current gaps in ensuring a safe environment in our sport. We will work with centres and clubs to implement the recommendations of that review when it is completed.

Thank you for your time in reading this communication and your support of these initiatives, should you have any questions or comments please email community@athletics.org.nz

Best wishes for the remainder of the athletics season.

Ngā mihi

Kind regards

Peter Pfitzinger
Chief Executive Officer
Athletics NZ