Travel Guidelines for Protecting Children

These guidelines are intended for use for Halifax Hotspurs Soccer Club (HHSC) to help establish a common understanding of expectations for increasing the protection of children/youth (players) taking part in overnight trips. The Coaching Association of Canada strongly recommends coaches and athletic staff are to adhere to the Rule of Two in interactions with players. Players and parents are to be informed of the Rule of Two and how it applies to all coach and athletic staff interaction with players.

Overnight Stays

The guidelines on managing overnight stays prioritise the physical and emotional safety of all players:

1. Always aim to ensure that people are roomed with those with whom they feel comfortable and safe, and invite players/parents to provide any details, specifications, as well as suggestions about whom they or their child feel most comfortable.

2. If players over the age of 13 are assigned to hotel rooms together, arrangements should include placing similarly aged and same gender teammates together, giving consideration to Halifax Hotspurs Soccer Club (HHSC) inclusion policy.

3. Coaches and/or staff should not be permitted share rooms with players.

4. Screened adult chaperones are placed on all floors with players. Whenever possible, players all stay on the same floor and same wing in the hotel. Interactions between players and adult chaperones, coaches, and/or staff follow a rule of two.

5. Establish expectations of privacy with players, coaches, and staff around bathroom use, showering, and changing in hotel rooms and dorm rooms. Adults, including team staff and chaperones, should not share bathrooms or showers with players.

6. Specify where players can and cannot go on their own or without an adult accompanying them. Establish expectations that players must use the buddy system when within the hotel, but outside of the room. If leaving the hotel, an adult chaperone must be informed, players must be in groups of three or more, and players must adhere to curfew hours and policies about where they can and cannot go unsupervised.

7. Players do not leave the room after curfew without adult chaperones and only within team guidelines or with expressed permission (except in the event of emergency).

8. Coaches and staff should not be meeting with the players in personal/private spaces such as hotel rooms or change rooms.

9. Always use designated conference rooms/meeting areas in hotels for socialization between players, coaches, staff, and chaperones (e.g., athletic therapists, doctors, and nutritionists). All socialization occurs in groups and is subject to a rule of two. Meetings and other interactions between players, coaches, staff, or chaperones take place in public areas of the hotel or an athletic facility and does not occur in hotel rooms.

10. Chaperones are responsible for the safe transport of players and are to accompany them in groups. If a situation requires transporting a single player, adhere to a rule of two or parents should transport their own child. All transportation should be transparent where it is well communicated who is with the youth players, when, and for what purpose.

11. Safety planning: if players are sleeping in a room without parents/guardians, a safety plan shall be put in place. This plan is clearly communicated and shared in writing with the players and parents/guardians on the trip. This should be done in advance of the trip in order to allow for questions and feedback. A safety plan shall include:

• Having adult chaperones, who adhere to a rule of two, in the hotel and available to players at all times.

• Answering the door (e.g., not opening the hotel room door for someone unknown or unexpected). Coaches, staff, and adult chaperones (and in some instances parents) should not show up at the hotel rooms without phoning in advance.

• Behaviour expectations: players are not to leave their hotel room at night except in case of emergency (and in accordance with the emergency situation procedures); no alcohol/drugs; steps for a player to take should there be behavior issues with another player to address with an adult in charge; and what to do should the player have a concern with a coach, member of the staff, chaperone, or other adult.

• Emergency situation procedures (e.g., in case of injury, severe illness, accident, fire, hotel evacuation).

• A phone list should be shared with players and parents which includes numbers for coaches and staff on the trip, parents/guardians of each child, and emergency phone numbers.

• Establish expectations for use of electronic devices (e.g., phones, tablets, computers), including:

  
  

  • Prohibiting taking pictures or recording videos of others in private situations (e.g., in bathrooms, when changing, or when sleeping), or in a secretive or disrespectful manner.

  • Ensuring players receive permission from another player prior to taking pictures of or recording videos that person both in field of play and off;

  • Prohibiting private communications between an individual player and a coach/staff member/ chaperone other than for that which is directly related to and necessary for the sporting event. Should communication be in an electronic format, the players parent/guardian should be included on the communication.