knows what to do when something doesn’t feel right. Not a laminated certificate gathering dust in a filing cabinet, but real, current knowledge of how to spot a concern, record it, and pass it on correctly. Around 6.2 million children under 18 take part in grassroots sport every week in the UK, and most of those sessions are run by volunteers rather than paid staff. That’s exactly why safeguarding officer training matters as much as coaching qualifications, if not more.
Clubs often treat the safeguarding officer role as an admin job someone gets talked into at the AGM. It isn’t. It’s the person parents trust to act if their child tells them something, and it’s the person a governing body will ask questions of if an incident ever needs investigating. Getting the training right protects children, but it also protects the volunteer doing the job and the club as a whole.
Why Safeguarding Officer Training Matters More Than Clubs Think
A single missed red flag can undo years of good work at a club. Parents don’t return to a club they don’t trust, sponsors quietly disappear, and volunteers who feel unsupported walk away. None of that is abstract reputational risk. It plays out in falling registration numbers and committees that can’t fill roles the following season.
The Child Protection in Sport Unit, a partnership between the NSPCC, Sport England, Sport Northern Ireland and Sport Wales, sets out national standards that any organisation working with under 18s is expected to work towards. Those standards call for a designated person at club level, usually the safeguarding or welfare officer, who has completed specific training for the role rather than general coaching CPD. That’s the whole point of proper safeguarding officer training. It teaches the specific skills of recognising, responding to, reporting and recording a concern, not generic child safety awareness.
What a Good Course Should Actually Cover
Course content varies by provider, but a decent course should leave someone able to do four things without hesitating: recognise the types and signs of abuse or neglect, respond appropriately in the moment, report a concern through the right channel, and record what was said accurately and without adding interpretation. The NSPCC’s own sport safeguarding training was last reviewed against legislation and guidance across all four UK nations in January 2024, and it’s built around exactly that structure.
A separate, more senior course exists for Designated Safeguarding Leads, run by the Child Protection in Sport Unit through NSPCC Learning. It’s a full day, delivered online, and covers current legislation in more depth than the entry level course. It’s aimed at whoever holds ultimate responsibility for safeguarding decisions at a club, not every volunteer who happens to coach an under 12s side.
The NSPCC’s Child Protection in Sport Unit also runs a programme called Time to Listen, built specifically for club level safeguarding officers rather than coaches or officials. It exists because the safeguarding officer role has different demands to coaching. Someone can be a brilliant coach and still be the wrong person to have a difficult conversation with an upset nine year old, and training should reflect that difference rather than lumping everyone into one generic module.
How Often This Training Needs Refreshing
This is where a lot of clubs slip. Training isn’t a one and done box to tick when someone takes on the role. England Netball requires its welfare-related safeguarding training to be refreshed every three years under its ENjoy, ENsure, ENtrust framework, and other governing bodies run similar cycles. Legislation changes, guidance gets updated, and a course someone completed five years ago won’t reflect current best practice on things like online safety or peer on peer abuse.
A simple fix is to build refresher dates into the same calendar as DBS renewals, so nobody is relying on memory to know when their safeguarding officer training has lapsed. The off season, once fixtures wind down, is the obvious window to sort this before a new intake of players and parents arrives in September.
Choosing the Right Safeguarding Officer Training Course
Most national governing bodies, including the FA and the RFU, point clubs towards their own accredited safeguarding pathways first, so it’s worth checking there before booking anything independently. Where a club needs a course outside its NGB’s own system, or wants something for a volunteer who isn’t affiliated to a specific sport, NSPCC Learning’s safeguarding in sport course is CPD certified, self paced, and built specifically for people who come into regular contact with children through sport or physical activity.
Whichever course a club picks, it’s worth checking three things before signing a volunteer up: is it accredited or CPD certified, when was it last updated against current legislation, and does it match the level of responsibility the person actually holds. A club chair signing off on the cheapest available course without checking any of that is a common, avoidable mistake.
Common Gaps Clubs Get Wrong
The most frequent problem isn’t a lack of safeguarding officer training altogether, it’s training that’s gone stale or was never matched to the person’s actual role. A few patterns come up again and again: a safeguarding officer trained years ago with no refresher booked, a club relying on one trained volunteer with no deputy if that person is unavailable, and training certificates kept on paper with nobody responsible for tracking renewal dates.
Committing to a deputy safeguarding officer, even an informal one, closes the biggest gap. If the trained person is away on the one weekend something happens, the club still has someone who knows the reporting process rather than a committee member improvising.
How Spond Supports Safeguarding Officers Once They’re Trained
Training gives a safeguarding officer the knowledge. What they do with it day to day depends on the systems around them, and this is where a lot of the actual workload sits. Spond’s safeguarding features are built to support that role rather than replace the training itself. Guardian controlled registration means under 18s can only join a group through a parent or carer, so consent is documented from the start rather than assumed. Messaging is traceable within the app, which matters if a safeguarding officer ever needs to review a conversation as part of following up a concern.
Access controls mean sensitive information and direct communication with junior members stay limited to people the club has actually cleared, and incident logging can be handled directly in the app rather than living in someone’s personal notebook. None of that replaces safeguarding officer training. It just means the club has a record to point to and a system that makes acting on that training easier in practice, not just in theory.
For a broader look at getting a club’s safeguarding approach in shape before a new season, our earlier piece on safeguarding in grassroots sport covers the wider off season checklist, from DBS renewals to risk assessments.
Get Safeguarding Officer Training Sorted Before the Season Starts
Booking this shouldn’t be the thing that falls off the list when fixtures start piling up again. Sort refresher dates, confirm a deputy, and pick a course that actually matches the role before the first match of the new season, not after an incident forces the issue. A club that gets this right once tends to keep getting it right, because the habit of checking renewal dates and matching training to role becomes part of how the committee operates rather than a scramble every few years.
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