Good question. No, I imagine not unless they are made USEF members for some reason. Also the farrier, vet, hay guy, handyman, trainers boy friend, etc etc all the random horse service providers who aren’t competitors.
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From - https://www.usef.org/media/press-releases/frequently-asked-questions-us-center-for (hopefully current, though date is 2019)
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Who is required to take the SafeSport Training?
Any USEF Competing Member who is 18-years-old and older (based on your actual birthday) is required to take the SafeSport training, including amateurs, professionals, juniors who are 18-years-old and older, and owners who have an annual, three-year, or lifetime membership. Others required to take the SafeSport training include USEF licensed officials, Chefs d’Equipe, Staff, Board Members, Competition Management, Coaches, Human Physios, Farriers, Trainers, Veterinarians, and Selectors hired or contracted by USEF. The SafeSport training requirement does not apply to USEF Fan Members or USEF Competing Members under the age of 18 (based on your actual birthday). -
What happens if I do not comply with the SafeSport Training requirement?
Those who do not complete the required SafeSport Training will be ineligible to participate in USEF activities, including competitions, and will be placed on the SafeSport Ineligibility List.
I think that “participate” translates as ride, own, train, and/or coach.
Also #5 in my post is #9 on the webpage and I’m not inclined to go through the machinations required to fix that.
So, I read that to mean if you are the official farrier at a rated USEF competition you need safe sport.
If you are a farrier who does horses, even those that compete at rated shows, you are not required to take safesport.
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I suspect the rationale behind whose is included in SS is based not on whether they come into contact with a child but whether they play a significant role in that child’s life such that the child could be at risk of sex abuse.
Who not whose sorry
With the addition of, who the governing body can control.
I think a barn with a groom staff has quite a bit of contact with a child that trains there, but USEF has no control over them so they can not really mandate they do something.
If it gets to the point that everyone on the grounds has to have some type of membership then they will require everyone to take safe sport.
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Also, a groom would not have a position of power and the ability to coerce or intimidate in the same way a coach, instructor, chef d’equipe, etc.
If a young rider in a show barn complained about a groom making inappropriate advances, the groom would be fired, the end.
Do I believe that grooms have had sexual relationships with minor riders? Sure. But if found out, pretty sure the groom would be summarily fired.
It’s just not the same as the George Morris/Jimmy Williams/Rob Gage sort of dynamic.
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I disagree on this point. Kids look up to people who have the job they think is the job they want.
I do agree that it is not the same as a big name trainer dynamic, but there is is an imbalance of power there, just not as large of an imbalance.
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looks like more of an issue about who they can control via this.
grooms come and go, and farriers and hay guys on the farm they have no influence over.
However, I think it is an oversight not to make minors take the training.
First of all, it could be eye-opening, and 2nd abuse is often a learned behavior. Just because you are not an ‘adult’ does not mean you cannot be an abuser, too.
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Agree. It’s really about who the USEF can and can’t regulate. They can regulate members and those the organization directly works with. It’s much harder to regulate outside those circles.
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This may be an unpopular opinion, but while I think having the SafeSport organization to investigate and handle allegations of abuse is an important thing, IMO the mandatory online training module is more of a bureaucratic “solution” that gives the appearance of “see, look how serious we are about addressing this” and allows for the checking of an arbitrary box without making a ton of difference.
My state enacted a similar law a few years back that any licensed healthcare professional has to take 4 hours of child abuse education every time they renew their license. I’d bet the overwhelming majority of people who sit through those 4 hours every 2 years don’t learn anything they didn’t already know or that would change their practices, and most probably click through it mindlessly and barely pay attention … but when it’s presented to a governing body as “Child abuse is terrible! Don’t you care about kids?! Shouldn’t ALL healthcare professionals be educated in how to recognize and report it? We can make sure they are, and since it’s an online training module there’s very little outlay of resources or infrastructure on our end, so it’s a win-win!” it’s hard to argue against it. It’s only a few (usually unpaid) hours out of someone’s life, right?
But then, how many online training modules are enough? Shouldn’t everyone learn, say, fire safety? What about protecting the elderly or people with disabilities? What about reporting fraud? What about learning to use equitable speech in the workplace? We want everyone to feel safe, right???
And if people are more willing to report abuse these days than they were 20 years ago … well, that still doesn’t mean requiring repetitive mandatory online modules works. There’s no randomized controlled trial showing causation, and life doesn’t happen in a vacuum … seeing others come forward with their stories and other abusers set down, and a culture that is just far less accepting of predatory behavior than in the past is probably far more likely to lead to change than a few hours staring in boredom at a computer screen because you want to be able to show your horse.
All this to say that while I think having the SafeSport organization is great, I’m not sure that making farriers take online modules is going to do much other than annoy the farriers.
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well, training is one thing, acting on it another. I guess they do the best they can with the limited muscle they have.
I think it would go further though if the kids were ‘trained’ in the awareness of what actually is involved in grooming.
And I don’t mean the animals they ride.
Since the process is so slow and the beginnings so innocent.
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The official farrier is contracted by the show, not by USEF, so I’m not sure. It may apply only to “team” farriers, etc.
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I think that’s right. My farrier works some USEF shows, and I am sure he hasn’t taken the training. Because I probably would have heard him complain about it, as he already complains about working the shows in general and tries not to do it—not enough work, makes him push his regular clients, has to chase people down for payment, etc.
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[quote=“trubandloki, post:2399, topic:463807, full:true”]
This situation occurred when SS first began: my trainer friend (f) , her client, 17 year old (f) and her grooms ( 3 m), were staying at the same hotel. Trainer couldn’t be in the truck alone with client, but client could ride from show to hotel and back
with grooms. Kind of a big plot hole there.
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maybe they need to adapt some BSA principles: Never be alone with a minor
But then again, where do employees fit in?
I helped a friend out with her Girl Scout event, because none of the parents could make it and she and her husband counted as one.
They need to work a little on the system.
But reality, necessity. and practicality don’t for with the ideal situation to protect every one.
Let me suggest an important difference here.
First, I do think healthcare professionals should do the training, and if they don’t read the material and click through mindlessly, that’s on them. I have to do these kinds of trainings for three different organizations and yes some of it is duplicative. (There are some good ones, though.) One imagines that healthcare professionals also start from a solid base after their years as an undergraduate and then whatever graduate program they completed.
BUT. A lot of horsemen aren’t exposed to ANY of this. They have literally NEVER been trained on sexual harassment, power imbalance, even… professional behavior or basic ethics. They may not have attended college at all. They may have never worked for any organization with HR.
FWIW I have also seen this problem with stay at home parents who have never worked outside the home, who suddenly want to be involved organizing soccer or whatever. They don’t understand what is confidential and what is not. They don’t understand power imbalance. So it’s not unique to horsemen, though IME horsemen are the among the largest group of people I interact with who fit this category.
I agree it’s no fun when the modules are repetitive and badly put together. I’ve seen some that are better than others, and I do especially appreciate it when it’s not the same one as last year. I think there are ways around this, even if there is one base training and then the subsequent years are all different case study/stories which I think are better for learning than simple repetition of facts.
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You have much more faith in the bureaucracy than I do!
As a healthcare professional I’ve had to do the state Child Abuse training every 2 years to renew my license and it’s a painfully boring 4 hours of my own time during which I can’t say I’ve learned anything I hadn’t already been taught elsewhere.
That is, of course, in addition to the dozens and dozens of online modules required by your employer every single year if you work at a hospital, including at least one on recognizing and reporting child abuse.
As far as having everybody involved with USEF (and other sports) do annual SafeSport “training,” I just don’t think making childless amateur ladies in barns that have few or no kids do online modules over and over in order to be allowed to show their horse is going to really change anything. Especially when many of us are already being online module’d to death at our day jobs. Requiring everyone to do initial training seems reasonable enough and not a huge burden, but after that it seems be more about the appearance of doing something than because it’s been demonstrated to be useful.
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Rather than repetitive online modules, what about an option for substituting an annual online session with an in-person session held at a major horse show on an “off” day? It’d have to be structured and no-nonsense, and monitored so people didn’t just sign in and leave. And not a gab fest where it devolved into verbal pro and con arguments about Safe Sport. Would that be a viable possibility? Or useful? Or just a potential waste of everyone’s time?
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like all training modules, they are worth what the person takes out of it.
You make it mandatory, they will bring their coffee mug and cellphones and zone out.
But perhaps something sticks the just in case.
By in large though, they know the task is monumental/impossible. Not unlike the scouting organizations. It covers their behinds, because it always depends on the regular people to actually enforce the rules, and their threshold for what is proper or not might vary greatly.
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