Play Safe Weekend 2024 – A sit-down interview with Worcester City Women’s Welfare Officer Gill Turton
Cerys, Gill and Jess from the 23/24 end of season awards
In support of Play Safe Weekend, we sat down with our Welfare Officer, Gill Turton, to talk about how important it is to have safeguarding remain a high priority within football.
This year, Play Safe Weekend will take place from the 28th – 29th September and is an opportunity for clubs across all levels to come together to increase awareness of safeguarding in football. The FA-led national campaign aims to encourage leagues and clubs to play their part in making the game safe for everyone, everywhere, every time.
You may have seen Gill behind the mic at Sixways as our matchday presenter, but behind the scenes, Gill has many important roles within the club, one of the most important being the first point of contact for players to go to when they need someone to speak to as the Club Welfare Officer.
A lot of WCWFC fans will be used to seeing you as our matchday presenter at Sixways, but can you tell us a little bit more about your role as Welfare Officer within the club?
“Welfare Officer for the club is a really important role. We take real pride in making sure that the environment for our players is a safe and welcoming one for them. Often, for football players, their safe space is the football environment where they come for training, where they come and play games. So, we make sure that that is exactly as it should be, safe and welcoming, providing them with that place outside of their normal day-to-day work life or school life, where they can come and be themselves and express themselves.
Player welfare is a huge focus at Worcester City Women, with that in mind, why do you think your role is so important at the club?
“I feel like, often in life, times can be difficult for people, and having a safe environment to go to and feel comfortable is really important. Sometimes, we don’t always achieve that within football, we often hear stories about how people have really struggled at football and some really devastating things have happened. We want to make sure that stuff like that doesn’t happen in our club.
I’m always available for the players to speak to, I try to go to as many training sessions as possible, and I’m always at a game. All the players have my phone number and can contact me, they can give me a call, they can WhatsApp me, and I always make time to meet with players outside of training times as well. We want to make sure that people feel comfortable coming to speak to me and to speak to other people in the club, Welfare and safeguarding isn’t just a one-person job, and we take it very seriously throughout the entire club. All our staff, all our coaches, have all done their welfare training, and they know how to deal with things with players. We just really pride ourselves on building that safe environment where, if people need to, they can come and speak to us about anything and everything, and we will help the best way we can.”
What would you say you enjoy most about your role as Welfare Officer?
“I really love building relationships with the players, with the knowledge that we’ve provided them that the safe space. It really helps me know that we’ve done our part to help the welfare and safeguarding of women’s football in this country.”
Not only do we have a handful of Under-18 players in our First Team squad, but we also have a whole Under-18 squad who play a massive part in forming City’s development pathway.
Everyone has a part to play in keeping football safe, to find out how to play your part in keeping the game safe, click here:
