Equity in your sport/coaching

[RJ]

Mrs H wrote

I'm afraid that despite what Awk says in defence of the matter it still intensely annoys me that there will be a general assumption (fostered by the powers that be) that with out the necessary certificate you are not operating an equitable, well run club - and conversely - a very mediocrely run club - which has attended the required courses and ticked the right boxes - might be a better club than one that chooses not to.

OK then..... what is a well run club? I'm sure we all believe we belong to one! Seriously though..... rather than the Minister for Sport defining what makes a good orienteering club how about Nope defining the criteria.

In the end I bet you don't create a list that is any different from the tick boxes already there. OK you may find a shorter and less onerous way of discussing 'ethics' and 'equal opportunity' but I bet you will still include them in your common sense list.

[Neil M35]

In the end I bet you don't create a list that is any different from the tick boxes already there. OK you may find a shorter and less onerous way of discussing 'ethics' and 'equal opportunity' but I bet you will still include them in your common sense list.

The problem isn't with the criteria - it's the method used to establish whether or not each criterion is satisfied. Faced with the question 'Is this an ethical club?', is the answer yes because somebody on the club has been on an ethics course? Absolutely not.

[Kitch]

I think Kitch has been reading too much Dilbert!

I bet he wears a Dilbert tie at work - just to show what a rebel he is

Kitch has to live through Dilbert on a daily bloody basis !

[ifititches]

As usual, I'm going to differ. Course it won't "make a whole club equitable", just like me attending equal opportunities training every three years to sit on NHS appointments committees doesn't make the whole NHS equitable. But it sure as **** (every time!)exposes me to hearing some of the bigotry that goes on in other areas of sport and/or NHS, and strengthens my resolve to try to avoid those mistakes in anything I'm involved in.

Sad to hear that you've all had such negative experiences. The equity one I went on had mixed bunch of sports, with coaches from huge variety of social / ethnic backgrounds. We were allowed to freely challenge and discuss the exercises, and we did; the tutor encouraged it.

I'm not of the belief (and I'm sure most of you aren't)that orienteering can only be the sport it is at present; I'd like to help bring it to lots of other settings and explore new variations to the full, to a wider audience. If they can make the indoor rowing championships, with 120 rowing machines lined up in the NIA last W/E (yes,I kid you not, I was there) into an exciting spectator sport, then there must be lots of other avenues/tree-lined rides? that orienteering could go down.

lol from ifititches (aka "goody two O shoes" ) off to Lakeside, so won't be around to see any response!

[RJ]

Neil M35 wrote:

The problem isn't with the criteria - it's the method used to establish whether or not each criterion is satisfied. Faced with the question 'Is this an ethical club?', is the answer yes because somebody on the club has been on an ethics course? Absolutely not.

I could certainly agree with that. But how do we measure whether a club meets that criteria. Solutions please.

Do we have to say no to the current situation when it achieves the end we all want. But perhaps there is a better way. Yep, solutions please.

[Mrs H.]

OK then..... what is a well run club? I'm sure we all believe we belong to one! Seriously though..... rather than the Minister for Sport defining what makes a good orienteering club how about Nope defining the criteria.

sorry been babysitting all day - well for a start off you put your best communicators to interface with the public - particularly new public - and you bend over backwards to provide thm with the best service you can - AND not the opposite as I experienced recently at a clubmark seeking club.

I take Melons point made earlier (even more shock) but you must not penalise the clubs who are already offering worthy service by wearing out their volunteers with tedious "ethical training" which they don't need because they fear they will suffer because they don't have the piece of paper that says they are doing a good job.

I think the whole point is you don't have to make the kind of list that RJ is talking about. The whole process should be holistic. all you have to do is be interested in helping people, if you concentrate on that then issues of minority, disadvantage, appearance or anything else that might give rise to prejudice, simply evaporate.

If you need to go on a course to teach you how to be kind - then God help you!

[Neil M35]

all you have to do is be interested in helping people, if you concentrate on that then issues of minority, disadvantage, appearance or anything else that might give rise to prejudice, simply evaporate.

You should go on Miss World - all the world's problems solved.

I don't think anybody in orienteering sets out to be unkind, but to take the example of my brother again, whenever he turned up at an o event there was just an assumption that he must be in the wrong place and car park officials would very kindly ask him if he was lost and wanted to know how to get back to the main road. Some things just need a bit more thought. I don't think courses are necessarily a bad thing for individuals and you can learn a lot - it's just the tick-in-the-box bureaucratic attitude behind Clubmark I have a problem with.

[Mrs H.]

I'm not being glib, you just have to be very clear about what your objective it - helping people to orienteer. I'm afraid my approach to a passing lost motorcyclist/motorist/hiker would be to suggest they go orienteering before i show them back to the main road - and indeed I have done that with the later category in the past, waiving fees, borrowing compasses, lending pens and whistles and doing away with any other bit of red tape which might stop someone having the experience. (It's probably against the rules to do that!!) As we have several motorcyclist in our ranks anyway - no one would be in danger of assuming that another turning up at our events was not intending to be there.

[Klebe]

it's just the tick-in-the-box bureaucratic attitude behind Clubmark I have a problem with.

And therein lies the problem with all these schemes. Dislike the beaurocracy as I do, if a scheme (if a scheme is to be implemented at all) is to work then it must be auditable to an outsider. A scheme which relies on tick boxes is easily audited, it also makes for consistent comparisons between individual clubs / sports.
To make the scheme valid, rather than 'lip-service' the right questions need to be posed and phrased in the correct manner. I do not profess to know all the right questions, each time I think of one I can see counter arguments. Perhaps thats were the problem lies with this type of measurement.

[Godders]

Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men.

[awk]

Interesting thread!

You were unlucky Gillian if that amount of time was devoted solely to ethics. It's certainly not required by the qualification - some yes, but nothing like that amount; it's a small part of one unit. I suspect that was down to the particular interests of the tutor.

It's interesting that some contributors seem to think that the Clubmark simply requires attendance on a course. It doesn't - there are other criteria as well in the ethical arena. It is an attempt to ensure that clubs are showing a commitment to an ethical approach. When it was put together for orienteering, the criteria were stripped down to the minimum - thus the rather simplistic tickbox approach. Of course a more rigorous, holistic assessment could have been built in - which would have required far more time from the hard pressed clubs to demonstrate.

The idea was to ensure that what was required is what any decent club would be doing anyway - the requirements are not exactly onerous. And one of those things is learning from others, including other sports - we have been remarkably insular and complacent in the past: Neil's brother's experiences have been repeated on innumerable occasions.

[awk]

Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men.

My grandfather, who knew him well, always said he was very full of himself.

[Stodgetta]

It's interesting that some contributors seem to think that the Clubmark simply requires attendance on a course

I realise that it requires more than attending a course to achieve Clubmark - I'm sitting down now with the Clubmark file in front of me, and I know exactly what it requires.

However, I don't think I, or anyone else from this club, would have gone to any of the Equity workshops had it not been a Clubmark requirement.

The relevant bit in the Sports Equity and Ethics section about this particular course says:

Criteria: One coach has attended sportscoach UK "Equity in your Coaching" or equivalent
Evidence: Copy of certificate of attendance or equivalent

So for me, sitting through 3 hours of inner city cricketers talking about the ethics that affects their sport was about picking up a certificate at the end of the evening to add to my growing file. I have brought the book home and will read some of it, but I can't see it greatly changing the way I do my coaching (hopefully that means I am an equitable person already).

[awk]

Again - of course it would be far more desirable that the club was rigorously assessed for its approach to equity. Rather than somebody attending a session from which they will hopefully learn something (even if it is just that inner city cricket has got problems ), an assessment, requiring a large number of hours of preparation of evidence, would need to be used instead. I know - when BOF did the preliminary award for Sporting Equals, that's exactly what I had to do. Attending a course would have been a far better and more interesting use of my time. Personally, I have always enjoyed the interaction between sports, and the opportunity to learn about others.

[graeme]

A note on presentation and content.

I hope you've all be marvelling at my powers of restraint I've actually been to hospital to have my knee MRI scanned - the noise - you've no idea

quite a scary machine in general really.

Not scary at all. They used to be scary when they used nuclear magnetic resonance, but with a stroke of the pen they're now safe and nuclear-free.
.

My wife Jane's in for one tomorrow...

Graeme (token octaroon)