Club accreditation
Sport England – Clubmark
What is accreditation?
Sport England’s Clubmark is a cross-sport accreditation scheme for sports clubs with junior sections in recognition of a quality club. Some sports have developed their own accreditation schemes based on Clubmark, to view information about your own governing body of sports accreditation scheme visit www.sportengland.org/clubmark or your own National Governing Bodies website.
Sport England has worked with the national governing bodies of sport (NGB’s) to give a co-ordinated approach to Club Accreditation that ensures clubs meet a set standard in the following categories:
The Playing Programme
This section covers the key elements deemed important in creating a quality playing programme for young people in your club. It identifies general issues associated with a well planned coaching and competition programme.
Duty of Care and Child Protection
This section focuses on ensuring clubs give serious consideration to any activity or event for which they are responsible for and to ensure that all participants can take part in a safe, child friendly and secure environment.
It is important for club members to attend SCUK Good Practice & Child Protection or NGB equivalent and a First Aid course.
Sports Equity and Ethics
This section aims to help clubs put in place policies and practices that encourage all members to adopt an inclusive and child friendly approach making opportunities available to all.
To assist clubs in adopting this approach two training courses have been identified for clubs to attend: A Club for All and Equity in Coaching.
Club Management
Clubs which are well managed tend to be clubs that are sustainable in the long term. These clubs have committees in place, the volunteers and members of the club are kept informed and regularly updated via news bulletins and promotional material. Well managed clubs also look at opportunities to link with local schools, governing bodies and sports development officers.
The following templates are available to download from www.sportengland.org/clubmark. The templates will assist your club in completing and working towards achieving accreditation/clubmark
- Codes of conduct for club officials and volunteers
- Risk Assessment Form
- Guidelines for dealing with an incident/accident
- Incident/accident report forms
- Register of attendance
- Junior membership form
- Committee job descriptions
- Sport action plans
- Guidelines to developing an action plan
- School – club link agreements
- Volunteer agreement forms
- Introductory letter to parents/carers
- Equity Policy Statement
- Constitution
- Code of Conduct for parents/carers and other supporters
- Code of Conduct for junior members