Safe­guard­ing, play­er care and well­be­ing man­ag­er at the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) Gary St Rose will head out to Zurich for sev­er­al months at the head­quar­ters of FI­FA to work di­rect­ly with foot­ball's world gov­ern­ing body.

His trip comes on the heels of a de­ci­sion by FI­FA to use T&T as a case study for safe­guard­ing, which deals specif­i­cal­ly with the pro­tec­tion of young play­ers.

Re­cent­ly, St Rose was at the helm of a de­ci­sion to sus­pend the li­cense of Shawn Coop­er, the coun­try's then Un­der-17 men's foot­ball coach for a breach of the safe­guard­ing pol­i­cy.

Pres­i­dent of the TTFA Kieron Ed­wards said St Rose will get hands-on ex­pe­ri­ence with safe­guard­ing, which has be­come the fo­cus in this coun­try and around the world.

"The Case Study will be this case, they will do their study on it, and we will get some grant fund­ing to en­light­en peo­ple more and bring the safe­guard­ing poli­cies to the pub­lic a bit more. The head of safe­guard­ing will be go­ing to Zurich for three months lat­er this year to work with the safe­guard­ing di­rect­ly out of the FI­FA of­fice, so Gary St Rose was se­lect­ed as one of the per­sons to work out of Zurich for three months this year," Ed­wards said Sun­day when con­tact­ed.

"Our safe­guard­ing is one where per­sons in the re­gion would now pig­gy­back off of in terms of im­ple­ment­ing their safe­guard­ing in the next cou­ple years in the next FI­FA cy­cle. So, it's some­thing big for T&T. We've been tak­ing the lead in terms of safe­guard­ing for the last cou­ple of months, over the last 11 months since we've been in place.

"We would have worked to out­fit the de­part­ment re­cent­ly. There are 21 per­sons in our safe­guard­ing de­part­ment with sev­en per­sons hav­ing a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to is­sue breach­es of the pol­i­cy through­out var­i­ous re­gions in T&T. So, while per­sons, when they get a safe­guard­ing breach, they may see the sign-off by Gary St Rose and think it's a one-man show, but in truth and fact, safe­guard­ing has been a de­part­ment for quite some time."

The up­grade to the de­part­ment saw the var­i­ous ap­point­ments - Ever­ton Al­fred, Deputy safe­guard­ing, play­er care and well­be­ing man­ag­er/chief com­pli­ance of­fi­cer; Raquel Rus­sell, TTFA fe­male pro­gramme safe­guard­ing of­fi­cer and con­cerns team; Lystra Lara, TTFA club li­cens­ing safe­guard­ing of­fi­cer; Lin­coln Charles, North Zone lead of­fi­cer, and ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing team; Magde­line Bunting, North Zone of­fi­cer, ad­min­is­tra­tion; Mark Wil­son, North Zone of­fi­cer, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and events team; Shenelle Ash­ton, North Zone of­fi­cer, ad­min­is­tra­tion; Stacey-Ann Au­gus­tus, East Zone lead and con­cerns team; Merere Louis Gon­za­les, East Zone of­fi­cer, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and events team; Sascha Williams-God­dard, East Zone of­fi­cer, con­cerns team; Bevin Alexan­der, East Zone of­fi­cer, con­cerns team; Jenice De Coteau, East Zone of­fi­cer, ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing team; Mar­vin Singh, East­ern Coun­ties lead of­fi­cer, ad­min­is­tra­tion; Shawn Din­di­al, East­ern Coun­ties of­fi­cer, video con­tent cre­ator; Jean­nifer Long, Cen­tral Zone lead, ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing team; Der­win Val­lie, Cen­tral Zone of­fi­cer, ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing team; An­tho­ny Wolffe, South Zone lead and con­cerns team; Ceasar Mitchell, South Zone of­fi­cer and ex­ter­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions re­la­tions; Ald­win Ju­nior Fer­gu­son, South Zone of­fi­cer, com­pli­ance team; Joseph Dou­glas, South Zone of­fi­cer, con­cerns team; and An­dre Barnard, South Zone of­fi­cer and com­pli­ance team.

Ed­wards said in ad­di­tion to the ap­point­ments, T&T usu­al­ly has four per­sons on the in­ter­na­tion­al pan­el for safe­guard­ing meet­ings, while all oth­er coun­tries have just one.

He con­clud­ed by say­ing safe­guard­ing is some­thing big that they've looked at and hope to trans­form the game in the right way, not just on the field, but off the field as well and en­sur­ing that the next gen­er­a­tion is pro­tect­ed in the right way.