Best Practice

Once staff, coaches and volunteers are safely recruited, appropriately trained and when adequate supervision is in place, club personnel should work together to provide a safe and fun environment. The Club Welfare Officer can use the Club Action Plan (see below) to ensure best practice is maintained.

Some useful ways of implementing this includes hosting parents’ information sessions, coaches’ briefings (especially at the start of the season), social medial posts in relation to where to find safeguarding information, reports to Youth Coordinator and club management Committee and providing links to online training for all throughout the season.

One important step in ensuring best practice is to communicate with the Age-Grade Players. This will allow the club to evaluate the activities that are in place at each level; if adults are happy with the programme of activities but the players are not engaging with them, the rugby club will not meet their needs, which leads to potential dropout of Age-Grade players and unsustainable youth rugby.

Below are links to documents that will assist you in implementing best practices in specific safeguarding matters that relate to Age-Grade Player Welfare; you can contact the Spirit of Rugby Officer in your area for additional assistance.