Wellbeing & Protection

Staying in Touch - Digital Best Practice

Your Club

Consider the platforms being used for communication internally and externally at your club.  Do you have the ability to direct message every member (parent) at the click of a button? Do you have an email address for every member? If not is this something you can consider putting in place? If you do have the ability to communicate efficiently with all members, why and what would you say?

Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat & Instagram are already being used by many clubs across the country to update and engage their members and community.  There are lots of creative ways to engage and inspire the players to practice and not sit on a computer or a phone:

- Consider setting a daily or weekly challenge. Coaches can set the challenge, and parents can film the efforts to upload on social media/club websites. Many clubs are already doing this and it’s well received.

- Consider fun fitness exercises or timed runs to create challenges or competition. You can check out the Scottish FA's activity hub for examples.

- Consider educational handouts as well as fitness related challenges. For example, naming countries, a football team and player from each country. You could also add in drawings of national flags and use a world map to learn where each country is…

- Consider other fun stuff like photos of coaches when they were younger and asking the players to identify them – be creative!

Helpful Tips

It is good for clubs to keep engaging with their children and young people online to promote continued social interaction, physical activity and mental wellbeing at this time, provided the club follows the existing policies and apply some thought to planning the activity.  For example:   

- The Child Wellbeing & Protection (CWP) policy related to communicating digitally with children and young people still applies in these times.

- The Scottish FA suggest that clubs communicate with parents generally in advance of setting up any online sessions to explain how they will be done, when etc. and give them the opportunity to raise any concerns/object (or perhaps get involved!)

- Clubs could use forums like Zoom, where the club sends out a link and the child/parent joins via the link rather than someone in the club having access to online details of the children themselves.  This would be especially important for younger children who are legally not allowed to have social media accounts and so clubs should not encourage the setting up of accounts for this purpose.

- Close attention should be paid to the security settings when setting up forums on online platforms such as Zoom.

- Where information is to be shared by social media, such as the filming of set challenges, this should be shared via closed groups with appropriate security settings.

- There should be a minimum of two adults taking part in any group sessions online.

- Only adults who are approved club officials should be involved in the delivery of these sessions.

- The same standards of behaviour expected by everyone in football apply online as to face to face contact.

- There should be no 1:1 online sessions between adult and child.