As Croatia’s national representative, Associate Professor Zrinka Greblo Jurakić of the Department of Psychology at the Faculty of Croatian Studies participated in a meeting of the Council of Europe’s international expert group on safe sport. At the meeting, she presented an annual report on activities undertaken in Croatia in this field.

The meeting, held in Strasbourg, focused on preparing documents for the 19th Council of Europe Conference of Ministers responsible for Sport, scheduled to take place in Monaco later this year. The conference will address mechanisms for establishing safe sporting environments. To ensure that documents concerning children and young people adequately reflected their perspectives, two youth delegates also participated in the expert meeting and contributed their experiences, proposals and recommendations.

Participants discussed examples of good practice from different countries and were introduced to a new online course on safeguarding children in sport, developed within the Council of Europe’s HELP programme.

The Council of Europe’s international expert group on safe sport is a unique platform that brings together policymakers, researchers, legal advisers, mental health and safeguarding professionals, child protection officers, and individuals with lived experience of violence in sport. Through their joint efforts, its members seek to translate European child-safeguarding standards into concrete measures and procedures designed to ensure a safe, inclusive and developmentally supportive environment for all children participating in sport.