201 safeguarding and protection in care settings

Lindsay Brandon is a lawyer whose past clients include athletes disputing doping suspensions. In her new post as the WTA’s first director of safeguarding, Brandon is leading an increased effort to protect athletes from predatory coaches — and others — on the women’s professional tennis tour.

“Safeguarding is about emotional abuse. Physical abuse, as well. And it’s not just coach-athlete,” Brandon said in a telephone interview from the BNP Paribas Open, which wrapped up Sunday in Indian Wells, California, and was the first tournament she visited as part of the job she began 3 1/2 months ago.

“There are other people that are part of this process,” Brandon told The Associated Press. “There can be athlete-to-athlete issues. There can be issue with respect to training staff separate from coaches. Those are just some of the examples.”

Her priorities include managing the WTA security team’s investigations of complaints — she did not reveal how many are currently active — and “monitoring any potential concerns,” along with improving education and creating a safeguarding code of conduct she hopes will be published in 2024.

The aim of that code, which Brandon said is separate from a general code of conduct that already exists, is to create a rulebook that outlines behavioral standards and establishes procedures to follow if a matter arises. It will apply to anyone who is credentialed “in the WTA environment,” Brandon said, including players, coaches, physiotherapists, other members of entourages, tournament staff and tour staff.

“Safeguarding is multifaceted and strongest when the entire population is educated, invested and held to the same standards. … We have a diverse body of players, staff and support teams, so the challenges and areas of concern will vary. As the governing body, our focus is making sure that players feel they can come forward and share their concerns, which plays a critical role in being able to address the issues that may be at hand,” WTA Chairman and CEO Steve Simon said in an email to The Associated Press.

Might be hard to gauge the success of such an initiative so soon, but Simon found at least one positive measure.

“We are seeing more athletes coming forward,“ he said, ”which is a great initial result.”

Adding what Simon called “the expertise of a dedicated safeguarding position” is the biggest public-facing step taken by the Florida-based WTA in this area since the issue of protecting players drew increased attention last year: A French player once ranked as high as No. 39 accused her former coach of rape; another player sued the U.S. Tennis Association for failing to protect her from a coach she says sexually abused her at one of its training centers when she was 19; 2002 International Tennis Hall of Fame inductee Pam Shriver , who won 21 Grand Slam titles in women’s doubles, said she “had an inappropriate and damaging relationship with my much older coach” that began when she was 17 and he was 50.

“Maybe we need to talk more to players and tell them what’s going on with everything so they know to be careful,” said two-time Grand Slam finalist Ons Jabeur, a 28-year-old from Tunisia. “Maybe it’s never enough and we should do more.”

Simon expressed a similar sentiment during an interview at the tour’s season-ending championships in November.

“We have … background checks on our coaches. We have an athlete assistance program in place. We have mental health experts who are here to help if there’s an emotional issue. We have all sorts of education programs. We have investigators coming in,” he said. “One of the things that we’re educating everybody on is: We need to help ourselves. If you see it, you need to report it. We need to work with our players to have them learn to set up the appropriate boundaries around themselves and what’s right and what’s wrong.”

Brandon, who said she played tennis through high school and for one tournament in college, came to the WTA after about seven years working for Howard Jacobs, a well-known sports lawyer who recently helped tennis pro Varvara Lepchenko get a doping ban reduced from four years to 21 months.

“Lindsay’s knowledge in this area (applicable rules, inappropriate behavior, etc.) is likely more in-depth than anyone the WTA could have hired for this role,” Jacobs wrote in an email to the AP.

Brandon planned to travel to the Miami Open, where play begins Tuesday, and “as many tournaments as I reasonably can this year,” including smaller events where younger players compete.

“The earlier you can provide support and outreach to these athletes, the better,” Brandon said. “I tell people that I don’t want to just be a response resource; I want to be a support resource and a preventative resource, as well.”

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AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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Rianna Walcott has been doing anti-racism work for years. As co-founder of Project Myopia , an initiative that seeks to diversify university curricula, and a black feminist scholar, she has long carried the workload of educating people on racism and anti-blackness in society. But in the last month – since the death of George Floyd and subsequent global Black Lives Matter protests – a time that might seem (from the outside) as a breakthrough for such educators, Walcott has been too drained to engage with the online conversations. It has, in short, been exhausting.

Because Walcott, like many other black people, has seen it all before. “There’s a horrible sense of inevitability that it will end as all have ended and frankly, I’m very wary of how this moment always equates to more work for me,” she tells The Independent . “We know people will notice for a bit and then go back to not caring and we’re left with [trying] to make them care again.”

The last few weeks have felt especially hard to live and survive as a black person. From being confronted with how we’re four times more likely to die of Covid-19 than white people; to continuously grieving black victims of state violence , like Floyd and Breonna Taylor in the USA, to disputing the very existence of racism with the British prime minister. Historian Jade Bentil describes this persistent anti-blackness, as a “framework through which we can understand how societies are organised around black people always living in close proximity to death”; the world, as we know it, is organised by anti-blackness and it shapes everyday life.

Processing all this is traumatic for black people, but this trauma is further compounded by having to watch non-black people spending the same period “discovering” anti-blackness, in many cases seemingly for the first time.

This urgent need to broadcast their realisations spurned the posting of black squares on Instagram for #BlackOutTuesday, which ultimately took over the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag and drowned out resources that have been created by black organisers, as well as the circulation and adoption of text templates for how to speak to black people during these times. Many of us received check-in messages from non-black people – some of whom we haven’t spoken to in years or, in some cases, never before – looking to have their guilt assuaged, letting us know they had donated to bail funds or asking for readings lists and recommendations.

Black creatives found themselves tagged on every kind of ‘10 black people you should be following’, leading to hordes of new non-black followers viewing us as resources who could offer them some profound soundbites, rather than people. We watched in real-time as brands and organisations developed their PR strategies to desperately highlight how they stand with black voices and communities ; aligning yourself with Black Lives Matter is the new black.

But among all these lightbulb moments for non-black people and pleas to hand hold, coach and demonstrate patience during a moment of learning for them – where are the guidelines for black people on how to deal with the emotional and mental fallout from sudden sweeping interest into our lives? And where is the guide to dealing with the fact that this urgency will no doubt wane once the “moment” passes?

Since mid-May, activists like Walcott have found themselves with a marked surge in requests for interviews, podcasts and general consultancy – often for free: “You’ll get someone in your DMs [saying], ‘You must be so busy and overwhelmed but I’m going to ask you this request anyway’ or ‘You must be so busy but do you have time for a phone call?’ We could talk in August, we could talk in October – we’ll still all be black people in academia and medicine then, why do we need to talk right now? I have to clear my schedule because you’ve decided that racism matters right now.”

Walcott also highlights the ways that black people are living through more than one pandemic and how this panicked rush to demonstrate support means that it feels that only one form of anti-blackness can be spotlighted at one time: “Anti-black racism isn’t going away and neither is Covid-19 so it concerns me that people have stopped talking about how black people have been disproportionately affected by this pandemic. People talk about racism as if it’s one big thing and that thing is police brutality. Other forms of racism become less important because people are unable to look at the totality of racism.”

Lee Chambers , a psychologist and wellbeing consultant, says this multi-layered trauma is undoubtedly impacting the mental and emotional health of black people “If we consider the fact that there is an expected global mental health crisis due to Covid-19 alone, the amplified strain of dealing with racism is hard to bear. We all have our own personal journey with racism, and the current situation opens up our past experiences,” he says.

The emotional drain is only further heightened if you’re a black person who is active online and therefore privy to the periodic “awakening” of non-black people encountering anti-blackness without any awareness for the longstanding conversations that black people have been flagging.

“[Real engagement] is dwarfed by the sheer amount of non-black people suddenly declaring heightened self-awareness and compassion,” Chambers adds. “They’ve monopolised the conversation, drowned out the activists and those that live the cause, and most importantly for wellbeing, their sudden enlightenment isn’t congruent with their actions and how they live.”

Counsellor and therapist Richard Stephenson adds that, during these times of unrest, the pressure placed on black people isn’t just felt as part of a community, but as individuals too, with people having to make autonomous decisions around how to handle the limelight: “A common thought process (albeit unconscious) can be: ‘Part of me wants to push forward whilst the momentum is here and another part wants it all to blow over due to the fear of alienation and possible rejection.’ This creates an internal impasse.”

For precarious workers and freelancers they may feel the additional burden of financial stability being tied with engaging, feeling it is the only real option they have. But as Walcott notes, these periods of piqued interest can actually do more harm than good: “I think it’s impossible to get involved in these conversations in a way that’s meaningful if it’s your year-round work. It’s not a moment for us, it’s for white people to feel comforted and like they’ve learned a little bit.”

The conversation will move on, the tweets and posts of support peter out, normal service will resume. “Through somewhat disengaging, I’ve tried to protect myself from the inevitable hurt of this passing because that’s what it is: hurtful,” Walcott shares. “We’re already watching the conversation shift and if you try to talk about these issues that specifically impact black people, it’s framed as a derailment of the conversation, as if these conversations are entirely distinct when they are actually pervasive and overarching.”

She highlights the phrase “ allyship fatigue ”, a term coined to describe “being overwhelmed and exhausted of the emotions that come with doing the work of being an ally”. Walcott says: “It’s incredible that terms have been coined for when inevitably non-black people stop caring.”

In order to combat the emotional and mental fallout of this, both Chambers and Stephenson stress the importance of seeking professional help, if you’re able, and specifically try to connect with black therapists; projects like Black Minds Matter UK and LGBTQIA+ Therapy Fund have been specifically set up to aid black folks with making connections with mental health services.

Alongside considering meditation, exercise and limiting time spent online, Chambers believes that, above all, we should try to commune with other black people, rather than emotionally isolate: “Connect and talk with those who understand. Find safe spaces to vent and express your emotions…let’s do what we can to keep ourselves well.”

The strain of anti-racism education is placed on black people 365 days a year, but at times like these – with timelines filled with violence against black people and state failures to protect black communities – it is particularly taxing. While non-black support should objectively be a valuable resource, it means little when it places additional strain on overworked black voices, or co-opts and waters down a message, before falling silent once more.

Nicola Sturgeon has urged the SNP candidates vying to succeed her as first minister to “protect the ingredients of success” – telling Sky News the leadership contest so far has been “a less than edifying process”.

In a Beth Rigby interview due to air at 9pm on Sky News, Ms Sturgeon acknowledged the turmoil in her party following a dramatic weekend which saw her husband quit as chief executive amid a row about transparency.

But she said she did not regret her decision to stand down, saying after eight years as leader she had become so dominant in Scottish politics she was becoming a “barrier to succession”.

“I wouldn’t be standing down if I didn’t think that was necessary after 16 years in government, but also protecting the ingredients of our phenomenal electoral success,” Ms Sturgeon said.

Ms Sturgeon urged those vying to replace her “not to throw the baby out with the bathwater”, amid criticism of the candidates and a significant fall in paid-up support , with the loss of about 30,000 members since 2021.

“I’m not suggesting that this is not a difficult process and at times, it has been a less than edifying process,” she said.

“And what I’d say to all of those standing to succeed me as leader… is remember that I am standing down from a party that hasn’t lost an election in Scotland since 2010.

“This is a moment for refresh, renewal, change, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. We have the trust of the people of Scotland and we’ve got to make sure we retain that trust.”

Sturgeon ‘has not been contacted by police over SNP probe’

In one of her last interviews as the country’s leader, Ms Sturgeon also told Sky News she has not heard whether police want to interview her or her husband as part of a long-running probe into SNP finances.

Peter Murrell, who had been the party’s chief executive since 1999, quit on Saturday after claims he misled the press over membership numbers.

Asked if she had heard whether she or her husband will be interviewed by police, Ms Sturgeon responded: “No. I wouldn’t comment on any ongoing police investigation and I am not going to comment on this one.”

The SNP has previously denied any wrongdoing around party finances.

Sturgeon ‘doesn’t regret’ gender reforms

Ms Sturgeon insisted the probe did not play any part in her sudden resignation last month – saying it was a mix of personal and political reasons.

And she said she “doesn’t regret” pushing forward with her gender recognition bill – which critics have suggested is what brought her down.

“The threat to women are abusive and predatory men, not trans people. So I don’t regret taking on that issue,” she said.

“My regret is that I wasn’t able to take the debate and discourse around it, into a more rational place

“That’s part of what I’ve been saying here. Maybe I’ve been in politics too long now to be able to do that as effectively as I need to.”

The outgoing first minister added that she had received “more toxic abuse on this issue, much of it from women claiming to care about women’s rights and women’s safety than I have on probably any other issue”.

“I’ve never doubted I’m doing the right thing”

Reflecting on her last few weeks in office, Ms Sturgeon said she had “mixed emotions” but said “I’ve never doubted that I’m doing the right thing. And that’s in my core. I feel that in my gut”.

Asked if she could have stayed on until the next general election she replied: “Yeah, I could have done but at what cost to myself?”

She said that in politics “maybe because it’s tended to be more men than women doing it, there has been a tendency to cling on” and she did not want to do that.

“I think anybody should only ever do a job like this if you can give it everything and that’s not just 100% of your work – a job like this you should give everything of yourself. You’re never off duty.

“I’m not complaining about this, it is part and parcel of what the job is about. I can’t just open my door and go for a walk with a friend on a Saturday morning, I can’t just go for coffee.

“All the things people take for granted are not there for you. and I think there is only so long anybody can and should do that.”