On 11 and 12 April, the UEFA Child and Youth Protection Workshop took place at the Brdo Congress Centre in Slovenia. The event served as a unique opportunity for national football associations in Europe, represented by Child and Youth Protection Officers and Football Sustainability Managers, to share their progress in this field and learn from each other and invited experts.
On World Children’s Day, 20 November 2023, UEFA published its Competition-specific Child and Youth Protection Guidelines.
These UEFA guidelines set out competition-specific child and youth protection guidance for event organisers, event child safeguarding leads and/or child and youth protection officers when staging competitions and/or events with the participation of children and young people.
The document represents a further step in strengthening the protection for children and youth participating in football. They are informed by internal and external consultation between April 2022 and May 2023 and complement the UEFA Child and Youth Protection Policy and Toolkit.
On 31 March 2023, the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) presented its first Protocol for the protection of children and adolescents.
"Everybody in the gym saw it, but no one did anything! I was so confused." (a survivor)
Sports professionals from Europe are invited at an international webinar about responding to harassment and abuse in sport. This is a Safe Sport Allies international webinar.
The Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) is developing, together with UEFA, a program for the protection of children in football, to work towards the creation of safe spaces for underage athletes. As part of the development process of this program, a working meeting was held this Thursday, 2 February 2023, at the Ciudad del Fútbol in Las Rozas, with the attendance of different coaches from youth national teams.
On 9 February 2023, the Albanian Football Association (AFA) and Terre des hommes Albania (Tdh) signed a cooperation agreement in the field of child protection in football, in line with UEFA's initiative to develop national child protection policies for each of its 55 members. The agreement comes as a continuation of the previous collaboration to improve the quality of child protection in football, including Tdh's contribution to the drafting of two important documents of the AFA: the child protection policy in football and the code of ethics.
In December 2022, the Albanian Football Association (AFA) in partnership with Terre des hommes Albania organised a training session on “Child Safeguarding in Football”. Since a long time, the AFA has been committed to developing and implementing its policies for the protection and preservation of the safety of children in football, also based on the guidelines of UEFA and FIFA.
The Ukrainian Association of Football continues to work on raising the awareness of people working with children's protection in football. Thus, the relevant module is included in the UAF "Diploma D" and UEFA "Diploma C" educational programs.
The first UEFA Child and Youth Protection Summit took place on 17-18 November in Tubize (Belgium), at the Royal Belgian Football Association's (RBFA) new headquarters. Forty-nine UEFA member association’s child and youth protection officers were joined by keynote speakers of the European Commission and the Council of Europe, as well as leading researchers and experts in child and youth protection.