All adults who work with children or vulnerable adults have a responsibility to safeguard and promote their welfare.

Whether you have paid staff or volunteers, you should be undertaking some degree of safety checking on anyone who may be required to work with children or vulnerable adults.

NZF strongly recommends that all federations, clubs and other football service providers undertake police vetting for any paid staff or volunteers who have regular or overnight contact with children or vulnerable adults. Regular or overnight contact means the person has contact (other than merely incidental contact) with a child or vulnerable adult:

• overnight; or
• at least once each week; or
• at least 4 days each month

Take a look at our recommended pathway to safeguarding:

Dealing with suspicions of child abuse of vulnerable adult abuse is difficult, and especially if the allegation is made against someone who is a staff member or volunteer. 

It’s not the responsibility of NZF, federations, clubs or other football service providers to investigate suspected child or vulnerable adult abuse.  However reporting a concern about abuse, suspected abuse, neglect or wellbeing to a federation Safeguarding Advisor or to the NZF Safeguarding Manager is really important to ensure that the concern is dealt with properly and consistently by the relevant statutory authorities (Oranga Tamariki – Ministry for Children or NZ Police).

Intervening early to provide support to address wellbeing concerns can prevent more serious concerns occurring. Details of personnel appointed by NZF and federations to oversee safeguarding are available on their respective websites.​​​​​​​

If abuse is suspected, please follow the recommended process shown in the flowchart.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

To report a concern, please download the Report of Concern form below and follow the instructions on the form.