The Cabildo Presents Its Protocol for the Protection of Children and Adolescents in Youth Sports at CIAT

The Tenerife Athletics Center (CIAT) in Santa Cruz de Tenerife was the venue chosen yesterday, June 20, for the Tenerife Island Council to present the Action Plan for the Protection of Children and Adolescents to the island’s sports organizations, an event attended by the island’s Councilor for Sports, Yolanda Moliné.

Moliné emphasizes that this Framework Protocol was created with the goal of “providing safe environments for sports participation in Tenerife, and serves as a fundamental tool for addressing, through prevention, potential risk situations that arise in the context of grassroots sports.” This accompanying document builds on the work that the Tenerife Island Council’s Sports Service has been carrying out in this area through the “Educar Entrenando” program, in collaboration with the General Foundation of the University of La Laguna, thereby fulfilling its responsibility as a public administration under the Organic Law on Comprehensive Protection of Children Against Violence (LOPIVI), which took effect in 2021.

The Island Council is actively committed to ensuring the well-being of children and creating safe environments for them to participate in sports. Last year, it also approved its Second Island Plan for Children and Adolescents and renewed its designation as a “Child-Friendly City,” awarded by UNICEF.

This document aims to outline the obligations, implications, and factors that the grassroots sports sector in Tenerife must take into account when working with children and adolescents who participate in sports at our local sports organizations. This framework provides a comprehensive description of the minimum requirements necessary for preventing violence against children, detailing each one.

This protocol, along with all its accompanying annexes—which are intended to facilitate its implementation by sports clubs and other organizations in the sector—was developed by José Ignacio Alonso Romero, a consultant specializing in this field who is internationally renowned, an expert for the Council of Europe on the prevention of violence against children, who has carried out similar work for the Provincial Council of Bizkaia, the Rafa Nadal Foundation, La Liga, and other leading sports organizations in Spain and abroad.

Furthermore, the specific settings, times, and needs inherent to sports create contexts that can increase the vulnerability of children and adolescents—situations in which action must be taken to prevent potential risks of violence, such as locker rooms, travel to competitions and practices, medical, physical therapy, or similar examinations, overnight stays, or tournaments away from home, among others.

Following the publication and entry into force of this framework protocol, the Cabildo will promote various initiatives aimed at providing the sports organizations that make up Tenerife’s sports community with a clear understanding of their child protection obligations and how to put them into practice.

During yesterday’s meeting, Iñaki Alonso presented this document and its appendices to Tenerife’s sports organizations so that, over the summer, they can work on adapting the models to their own organizations and implement them as early as the upcoming sports season. It is important to remember that all sports organizations must take this into account in all activities involving children and are required, at a minimum, to appoint a Child Protection Officer and ensure that staff have received basic training on preventing violence against children in sports, respond appropriately to any situation involving violence, and have action protocols in place. The event was also attended by Julio Brito, a tenured professor at the University of La Laguna.

For more information, visit www.deportestenerife.es