This section explains how sports organisations can measure whether their suicide prevention arrangements are understood, used and improving over time.

Sports organisations should regularly assess the impact and effectiveness of their suicide prevention arrangements. This should help them to identify where the needs of athletes, coaches, staff, volunteers and spectators are not being met, and where existing arrangements need to be strengthened. Monitoring should be proportionate to the size and nature of the organisation, and embedded within existing safeguarding, health and safety, EDI, welfare and governance systems wherever possible.

Self-evaluation and internal benchmarking can help a club, governing body or sporting organisation to establish a baseline, identify gaps and develop a suicide prevention action plan that fits its environment.

The review should cover:

• Existing policies
• Reporting arrangements
• Training
• Support and referral pathways
• The experiences of athletes, coaches, staff and volunteers

A Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) approach can support continual improvement:

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Monitoring should not focus only on the number of incidents. Sports organisations should use a broader range of indicators to understand whether support is visible, trusted and working in practice, including:

• Awareness of available support

• Confidence in raising concerns

• Uptake of training

• Use of welfare or support services

• Referrals

• Feedback

• Completion of agreed actions

Organisations should also review whether appropriate support is available at potentially difficult points in the sporting journey, including serious injury, deselection, loss of contract, disciplinary proceedings, retirement and transition out of sport.

Feedback from athletes, coaches, staff and volunteers is important because it shows whether arrangements are working for the people they are intended to support. Confidential or anonymised surveys, focus groups, welfare discussions and other consultation methods can help organisations to understand whether people feel safe asking for help, know where to find support and have confidence in the organisation’s response.

Organisations that are relatively new to suicide prevention might initially lack the data, policies or systems needed to answer every evaluation question. This should not prevent them from beginning the process. Establishing a baseline helps to identify what is already working, where further action is required and what information needs to be collected next. As systems develop, the organisation can collect better information and set increasingly ambitious objectives.

Care should be taken when collecting sensitive information, particularly information concerning thoughts of suicide or suicide behaviours. Appropriate confidentiality, data protection, safeguarding and escalation arrangements should be established before asking such questions, so that people understand how information will be used and what will happen if a serios concern is identified.

Monitoring should ultimately lead to action. Findings should be reviewed by those with responsibility for safeguarding, welfare and organisational leadership, with agreed improvements recorded, assigned to named owners and followed through.

In practice, evaluation should help a sports organisation to answer five core questions:

1. Do our people know where to get help?
2. Do our people feel able to ask for help?
3. Do our coaches and staff know what to do when they are concerned about someone?
4. Are our policies and support pathways working in practice?
5. What do we need to improve?

Regularly asking these questions helps to ensure that suicide prevention remains a living part of everyday sporting practice, not a policy that is only revisited after a serious incident.

BS 30480 provides further questions on organisational procedures and systems, which can support self-evaluation, benchmarking and continual improvement.