USA Swimming has announced an agreement with the Gundersen National Child Protection Training Center (NCPTC) to review the sport’s Safe Sport program, which is the name given to the program designed to better protect swimmers from abuse by coaches, among other things.
“The Gundersen National Child Protection Training Center staff and I look forward to conducting an independent, in-depth review of USA Swimming’s Safe Sport program,” said NCPTC executive director Victor Vieth. “We applaud USA Swimming for giving us unencumbered access to allow our team to scrutinize the program, and, more importantly, to come up with solid recommendations to improve it.”
Chuck Wielgus, the Executive Director of USA Swimming, says that through this partnership, they are “looking for a validation of what they have done well and a recommendation about how they can make the program better.”
Wielgus said that it was important that they found someone both outside of USA Swimming to review the program, and someone who understands the challenges that a “large and respected organization has to deal with.”
The NCPTC, which early this year joined the not-for-profit Gundersen Health System, originated as a collaboration between Winona State University in Minnesota and the American Prosecutor’s Research Institute. A huge portion of their work to date has been involved in implementing “model undergraduate child protection programs” in colleges around the United States, and among those with which they currently have partnerships include the William Mitchell College of Law and New Mexico State University.
In their own words, the NCPTC “works to end child abuse, neglect and other forms of child maltreatment in three generations through education, training, awareness, prevention, advocacy and the pursuit of justice.”
An exhaustive search of the web and request to USA Swimming couldn’t find any perfect correlations to this sort of partnership, but in the wake of the Penn State scandal, they did release a public report that focused mostly on how to get mandated reporters to report sexual crimes. Read that report here. They have, however, done a lot of work across the country with child protection training.
Wielgus said via phone that this “will be an in depth review of the programs, policies, and procedures that will help measure USA Swimming against the other top youth sport organizations. We want to make them better and are fully committed to improving the program,” and will “welcome anything the reviewer has to offer, regardless of the results.”
Wielgus says that the conclusions of the review are expected at the end of January, 2014.
I guess I know why we’ll be getting another dues increase this fall. Is this in addition to – or on top of – the 200k WE are spending on public relation firms – and whatever WE are paying for lobbyists in Cali?
Seriously – why can’t WE just clean house and start anew? Weilgus was perfect for the job he was hired to do – and did a great job. I don’t care how much we paid him. But, at this point, a marketing genius isn’t what serves the position best.
Chuck – thank you for helping to raise the sport’s visibility, and bringing the sport to new levels. Now just please step down, take most of the office… Read more »
Jamie Thomas, New South Swimming (NC) Charlotte NC
“Measure USA swimming against the other top youth sport organizations”. News Flash Weiglus: even if you’re program is better than others, it still is not sufficient. It really shouldn’t matter how your program measures up to any other program. What matters is how your program helps the membership of USA Swimming.
It would be nice that if this company does as it says, that any wrong doing or negligence that we have all read about (rumor or otherwise) would be exposed, communicated to the highest authorities, and recommendations for improvement involving removal of all those parties for life.
That would be pretty fantastic.
Unfortunately not much more than a pipe dream, I don’t think.
You don’t need an independent firm to tell them what they can do better. For instance, it’s probably a bad idea to give Olympic Trials deck credentials to an accused sex offender like Rick Curl. How can they stand behind a “Safe Sport” program when they put a man like that on deck with our swimmers? and with the knowledge and accusations of what he did.
Did Curl have Deck Credentials at 2012 Trials? If so, somebody’s head should roll.
he did. I remember even seeing him on deck as I watched on television.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/24/sports/kelley-davies-currin-seeks-ouster-of-usa-swimming-officials-after-coachs-abuse.html?_r=0
anonymous mom – I can confirm that this is accurate, he did have credentials and was on deck. He had a single Curl Burke swimmer registered with him as their coach, and apparently was even seen on the television broadcast at one point, as he was camped out right behind the blocks.
Thanks for the confirmation. I love our sport, but I am bitterly disappointed with the individual(s) responsible for issuing deck credentials to this abuser. If I were Kelley Davies Currin and saw him on tv ON DECK I would have felt sucker punched. I know he wasn’t convicted yet, but given the seriousness of the charges leveled against him, you would think that USA Swimming would have wanted to avoid putting anyone (especially young women) at risk. He has shown that he does not meet any kind of “Safe Sport” standard. If somebody is still under investigation, why would USA Swimming allow him to roam a deck with young women, or even girls? There are certain safety standards that we… Read more »