Anne Tiivas

Anne is the former Director of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) Child Protection in Sport Unit where she worked for nearly 18 years until September 2019.  Co-funded by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and Sport England, Sport NI, UK Sport and Sport Wales. She has been centrally involved in shaping and monitoring National Safeguarding Standards for Children in Sport in the UK since 2001 and in developing the new International Safeguards for Children in Sport (working with UNICEF UK as a founder member of the International Safeguards for Children in Sport Founders group). In 2016 the Child Protection in Sport Unit was awarded the Unicef International Safeguarding Children in Sport award at the Beyond Sport Summit.

Anne has recently appointed as chair of the International Safeguards for Children in Sport Advisory Group, having been a founder member of the initiative to create the Safeguards in collaboration with UNICEF, Brunel University and other sports bodies since 2012. Anne is a member of FIFA’s Expert group on Child Safegaurding’.  Anne advises a number of international groups on child protection and safeguarding in sport , including Panathlon International (member of the Scientific and Cultural Committee)  and is frequently called on to help with policy development overseas. She has recently been part of several European Union projects on safeguarding in Youth sport and elite youth sport that cross more than a dozen European Member States. These include ‘Safeguarding youth Sport’ led by the ICES and the ‘Sport Respects Your rights’ initiative co-ordinated by Edgehill University.

Anne has worked with the IOC on several projects in recent years and is co-author of the most recent ‘IOC Consensus Statement: harassment and abuse (non-accidental violence) in sport’. She has written widely on the topic of abuse of children in sport and is co-author of a new chapter in the 2017 Oxford Textbook of Children’s Sport and Exercise Medicine -Protecting child athletes from medical mismanagement and other forms of (non-accidental) violence in sport.