Safeguarding You: Turning sport's safety policies into everyday action

Safeguarding You’s modular, AI-enabled platform helps governing bodies, leagues, clubs and volunteers turn complex obligations across child safeguarding, concussion, incident management, governance and officiating into practical, consistent and auditable action. At the centre of the platform is Charlie, an evidence-grounded AI assistant designed specifically for sport, connecting people to trusted guidance and supporting frontline decision-making from the boardroom to the boundary line.

"Sport doesn't need another policy sitting in a folder," Wood says. "It needs a living system that helps people make the right decision at the right time, from the boardroom to the boundary line. Safeguarding You exists to make safety practical, consistent and scalable, so every child, athlete and volunteer can participate in an environment worthy of their trust."

Thirty years on the sidelines

Adam Wood brings close to 30 years of experience in governance, risk, compliance and organisational leadership, combined with extensive hands on involvement in community sport. His roles across club leadership, child safety, concussion implementation and league-level safeguarding exposed him to a persistent gap: what sport is expected to deliver, and what its largely volunteer workforce is realistically equipped to deliver.

The turning point came through his direct experience inside grassroots sport. He saw committed volunteers trying to do the right thing, but working without a connected system to translate standards, policies and medical guidance into clear, day to day actions. In 2024, Wood founded SGU to close that implementation gap, not by adding more administration, but by making safety easier to understand, easier to act on and easier to prove.

SGU connected with ASTN that same year, through Victoria's sportstech ecosystem, at a formative stage in the company's development. That early connection gave the business an immediate sense of sector identity, helping position it not simply as a compliance platform, but as a sportstech company solving a major industry-wide implementation problem. Wood is supported by a multidisciplinary team and partner network spanning technology, allied health, research, sport administration and governance: Chief Operating Officer Leane Maddren; Courtney Smith, who leads the technology build; concussion management expert Cliff Butler; and academic collaborators at Swinburne University of Technology, who support AI quality assurance and user evaluation.

A policy sitting in a folder

Sport has no shortage of policies, standards and good intentions, the market gap is implementation. Governing bodies issue guidance, but consistent delivery ultimately rests with thousands of leagues, clubs, coaches, officials and volunteers operating in fast-moving environments with uneven capability and limited resources.

The consequences of getting it wrong are significant: children can be exposed to preventable harm, concussion can go under-recognised or poorly managed, complaints and incidents can go undocumented or inconsistently investigated, and organisations can struggle to demonstrate their policies are actually being applied on the ground. The burden falls hardest in community sport, where volunteers carry professional-level obligations without professional-level systems.

Charlie, and the six pillars of a safety operating system

SGU converts governance and safety requirements into usable workflows, guided decisions and shared organisational records, creating a continuous line of sight from governing body expectations through to league implementation, club action and match-day practice. At the centre is Charlie, an AI assistant that draws its guidance from approved source materials rather than open-ended internet content, answering practical safety, governance and concussion questions for the people who need them most, while also helping preserve institutional memory as volunteers turn over, and surfacing emerging risks before they become critical incidents.

Around Charlie sits a modular platform built across six areas: child safeguarding (Working with Children Check workflows and risk assessments); concussion and injury management (QR-accessible sideline assessment support, incident capture, and referral into SGU's verified allied health network); incident and investigation management (structured triage, chronology, evidence and audit trails); umpire and official management (training, verification and role readiness); governance and administration (policy distribution and reporting); and federated reporting, giving leaders visibility across organisations, clubs and programs.

For concussion specifically, SGU is careful not to diagnose, the platform guides volunteers through recognised protocols (CRT6/SCAT6 frameworks), facilitating a clear pathway from point-of-injury reporting through allied health referral to a documented, auditable return-to-play progression. The whole platform is built for the federated structure of Australian sport: it can be deployed by a national or state sporting organisation, a league, an association or a club, and configured for the responsibilities of each level, so national bodies retain policy oversight while clubs keep local autonomy.

From “The Park” to nearly 300 clubs

SGU's growth reflects the credibility of that approach. The company was selected for the Australian Sports Commission's inaugural "The Park" sports innovation program, supporting the development and validation of Charlie and the broader safety operating system. It has since rolled out nationally with Judo Australia, creating a scalable implementation pathway across approximately 200 affiliated clubs, and signed a pilot with AusCycling focused initially on BMX, with the potential to reach a network of around 450 clubs. League and association implementations span the Frankston & District Junior Football League, South Metro Junior Football League, Southern Basketball Association and Knox Basketball Association, taking SGU's reach to roughly 300 clubs and rising, across at least five sports, AFL, basketball, judo, cycling and lacrosse.

Since joining ASTN, SGU has become an active member of the community, participating in industry events, conferences, mentoring and networking opportunities. Those engagements, and the peer-to-peer introductions they've enabled with other players across Victoria's sportstech ecosystem, have helped build enduring relationships with experienced sports leaders, whose insights and support have helped shape SGU's strategic direction and its approach to growth, partnerships and market engagement.

"ASTN gives Victorian sportstech companies something incredibly valuable: a connected ecosystem with a shared ambition," Wood says. "It brings innovators, sporting organisations, government, researchers and investors into the same conversation. That visibility and connection helps companies like ours move faster, think bigger and build solutions that can create impact well beyond Victoria."

Looking ahead

SGU's ambition is to become the trusted safety operating system for Australian sport, then take that capability into international markets. Over the next three years, the company plans to complete and scale the Charlie-centred platform across safeguarding, concussion, injury, incident and investigation management, umpire and official management, match-day risk intelligence and communications. Growth will come through top-down partnerships with national and state sporting organisations, leagues and major participation platforms, federated implementation rather than one club at a time, alongside a deepening medical and safeguarding advisory network and research partnerships focused on AI quality assurance and measurable safety outcomes, before prioritising international expansion into sports and jurisdictions with similarly federated, volunteer driven structures.

Getting there, the company says, will take access to scale: enterprise sporting partnerships, responsible growth capital, specialist talent, research collaboration and pathways into international markets, the kind of connections SGU sees ASTN and the Victorian Government continuing to help provide, alongside Victoria's broader mix of major events, elite and community sport, research capability, health expertise and technology talent. SGU wants to help make athlete and child safety a distinctive Victorian export, demonstrating that technology can grow participation and performance while strengthening trust, duty of care and institutional accountability.

Find out more

For more information on Safeguarding You, visit https://safeguardingyou.com

To see Charlie in action, visit https://safeguardingyou.ai

Read about SGU's selection for the Australian Sports Commission's "The Park" innovation program.

See Judo Australia's announcement of the partnership.