Football Coaching - An Introduction to Child Protection

The area of Child Protection (CP) is often one surrounded by feelings of fear, anger or inadequacy, mainly due to the fact that the average person in football knows only a little about the topic and this is knowledge often gained from the Headlines of newspapers.

All individuals involved in football must ensure everything is done to emphasise and ensure that all children and young people are never placed at risk for any reason.

In the UK and Ireland the tradition has been to treat professionals and volunteers with equal trust and confidence but while it is ideal to maintain this trust, it is essential that individuals are able to make decisions for themselves based on their own learning and experiences. For example, if a stranger came to your front door and stated that they could clean your house within 60 minutes for only £4.00, and all they required was the keys to the house. How many individuals would grant this stranger access to their house? There are not many individuals that would accept this offer. BUT thousands of parents do a very similar thing on a weekly basis, but instead of supplying them access to their house their allowing them access to their own children! On the assumption that a bag of balls, a clean tracksuit, cones, bibs and a first aid kit is all that is required to ensure that children’s safety. This belief is, unfortunately, both incorrect and often naive.

The simple fact is that all children and young people have the right to be safe, fairly treated, encouraged and to enjoy their football.

To make these children and young people safe is not just the responsibility of Police, Social Services etc it is the responsibility – of all the adults within the game, regardless the positions they hold.

It is because CP is such an emotive subject that people often prefer to pretend it doesn’t effect them or it’s not their responsibility, rather than seek to gain more knowledge. Such an approach is ignorant and inexcusable, especially as many companies have worked tirelessly to generate and publicise as much information as possible. And it is without hesitation that this site acknowledges the excellent work and progress completed by such companies and organisations as the NSPCC, Social Services, The F.A. ChildHope, Plan USA, and NAPCAN (Australia) amongst many others, regarding their efforts to supply information to safeguard children and young people.

The aim of this section is to provide you with a sound base of information and strategies which will hopefully help to enhance your own personal knowledgebase.

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