Surf Life Saving Member Protection Policy

Surf Life Saving Australia Limited (SLSA), including subsidiary companies and affiliated clubs, branches and states, is committed to the health, safety and wellbeing of all its members and is dedicated to providing a safe environment for those participating in surf life saving activities.

Surf lifesavers are nurtured in an environment that values safety, trust, respect, caring and responsibility. This environment encourages acceptance, confidence and risk taking. For surf lifesavers to venture into challenging waters in times of distress, they need to have faith and trust in themselves and in the people around them. The motivation for surf lifesavers to give freely of their time is to be found in surf life saving environments that value;

• safety and support
• caring and camaraderie
• trust and teamwork
• respect and responsibility

As part of the surf lifesaving community, each individual makes a commitment to actively encourage behaviours that promote a supportive and nurturing environment and contribute to our core purpose: “To save lies, create great Australians and build better communities”.

The policy attachments describe the practical steps we will take to eliminate discrimination, harassment, child abuse and other forms of inappropriate behaviour from our activities. As part of this commitment, SLSA will take disciplinary action against any person or organisation bound by this policy if they breach it.

Surf Life Saving Grievance Procedure Policy

This procedure explains what to do if you have a grievance about anything to do with Surf Life Saving. A grievance means any type of problem, concern or complaint about your involvement or the environment you are involved in.

For example, you could have a grievance about:

• Development and training availability;
• How an issues has been handled
• The club environment;
• Safety in the workplace;
• The treatment by an official or officer
• Discrimination; or
• Harassment.

SLSA recognises you can’t do a good job or be fully productive, if you feel other members or officers or anyone else at the organisation is treating you unfairly, discriminating against you or harassing you.

Key Principles

Confidential – only the people directly involved in the grievance or sorting it out, can have access to information. See the section headed “Record Keeping” for more information about where and how records will be kept.

Impartial (fair) – all sides get a chance to tell their side of the story. No‐one makes any assumptions or takes any action until all relevant information has been collected and considered. All sides have access to support or representation if they want or need it.

Free of unfair repercussions or victimisation – management and officers takes all necessary steps to make sure people involved in a grievance are not victimised for coming forward with a grievance or helping sort it out. If anyone victimises anyone else for making a grievance, they may be disciplined. However, if you use this grievance procedure to make up a grievance against someone that is not true, you too can be disciplined.

Sorted out at the local level, if possible – we aim to sort out all grievances at the local level, if possible, with the minimum of fuss. In many cases, grievances can be sorted out by agreement between the people involved with no need for further action to be taken.

Sensitively – the people who help sort out grievances have been specially trained to treat all grievances seriously and sensitively.

Timely – we aim to deal with all grievances as quickly as possible. There are time limits for different stages. We aim to sort out grievances within four weeks if at all possible. Most grievances can be sorted out even faster than that.

As part of the surf lifesaving community, each individual makes a commitment to actively encourage behaviours that promote a supportive and nurturing environment and contribute to our core purpose: “To save lies, create great Australians and build better communities”.

The policy attachments describe the practical steps we will take to eliminate discrimination, harassment, child abuse and other forms of inappropriate behaviour from our activities. As part of this commitment, SLSA will take disciplinary action against any person or organisation bound by this policy if they breach it.

Member Surf Safety Policy

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