To our Eltham Wildcats Basketball Community,

With the winter season complete and the summer season approaching, I want to take this opportunity to update you on where the Club is at, and to acknowledge what our players, coaches and volunteers have achieved.

The basketball.

Through everything this year, our players, coaches, team managers and families kept showing up for one another, and we are proud of their achievements.

• Junior Domestic: 119 of our teams made grand finals, and 63 of them won.
• Junior Representative Competition: 11 teams reached grand finals, 4 won premierships, and our Under 14.1 Boys are through to the Victorian Championship Reserve grand final this Friday at 8:30pm at Narrandjeri Stadium (John Cain Memorial Park Thornbury).
• Eastern Development League: a third of our teams won their playoffs.

To every one of those teams, and to the coaches and volunteers behind them: congratulations.

The work we promised.

When I wrote in July, I said that rebuilding trust would take time, transparency and action. I want to update you on all three.

The external review appointed in July is continuing. We committed to publishing a summary of its findings together with the Club’s response, and we will honour that once the review concludes. We expect this to be in October.

However, we have not waited to act:

• Every person who holds a role at the Club is now on a single screening register, with Working with Children Checks verified on a regular cycle rather than relying on anyone to tell us.
• A new Probity Checks Policy sets out what is required for every role. In several areas it goes further than the law requires.
• Child safety training for staff has begun (all office staff have completed the training, and our Committees will follow soon), and child safety is now a standing item at every Committee meeting.
• We have appointed a new Child Safety Officer in a paid role.
• We have engaged an external HR consultant to review our recruitment and employment practices.
• Our new website is live, with child safety information easy to find.

Child Safety Hub

The season ahead.

Summer teams are being finalised, Junior representative trials are under way, and in January we will again co-host the Eltham-Dandenong Junior Basketball Tournament. There is a lot to look forward to. The work above continues, because a safe club is the foundation of everything we do.

To our volunteers, who have given so much of their time this year, and to every family in our community: thank you.

If you have a question, or a concern of any kind, please contact us at info@elthamwildcats.net.au.

Carrie Davies
Interim President
On behalf of the Executive Committee of the Eltham Wildcats Basketball Club