Many coaches are casual staff employed solely as coaches. Schools also use third parties such as school sports coaching companies to provide coaches and run a particular sports program in a school. There are many sports coaching companies offering coaching services in the school market. Volunteers, including parent volunteers, are also used as coaches or in support roles such as team manager.

Coaching is a difficult and challenging role, particularly when coaching children and young people. Coaches are often coaching and supervising students on their own or with limited support or assistance during training sessions or on game day. They are required to make quick decisions in a sometimes high pressure environment. They must administer common medications to students and, if necessary, assess injuries and provide emergency management. Coaches must also manage risks and ensure that they and the team comply with school policies and procedures including dealing appropriately with student behaviour issues. Parents and carers, as well as spectators, can add to the pressure on coaches and volunteers. Parents can be critical of the coach and players. In addition to all these issues and challenges, coaches must promote and support a child safe environment and comply with child safety laws and regulations and the school’s own child safe policies and procedures.

Overview of Coaches, Volunteers and Sports Contractor Risks

The risks for schools in relation to sports coaches are many and varied.

Some of the risks include:

• inadequate experience and qualifications
• little understanding of the mechanisms of injury for a particular sport and of appropriate safety measures for the sport
• limited understanding of concussion or spinal injury procedures and limited first aid experience or qualifications
• the inability to effectively manage and supervise students and little understanding of child and adolescent development
• failure to enforce mandatory safety measures (for example, mouth guards)
• ineffective or even a toxic coaching style
• the inability to manage difficult or overbearing parents
• a lack of awareness of school policies and failure to support or enforce these policies
• a lack of awareness of legal reporting obligations, particularly by volunteers.

You may be surprised that a person who would expose a school to these risks would ever be given a coaching role in a school. Exacerbating these risks:

• there are many situations where schools might use people as coaches that have not fully completed all school induction and training and where only limited supervision of the coach is available
• teachers may be required to sometimes coach sports in which they have little experience
• sometimes schools only find out that coaches are displaying behaviours that represent an unacceptable risk once they have started coaching
• schools don’t usually have control over selection and suitability of coaches when they use third party companies to provide coaches and run sports.

Child Protection Risks

In addition to the risks already outlined above, the other substantial area of risk is child protection. In addition to ensuring that coaches, volunteers and contractors apply and enforce child protection/safety legislative requirements (such as mandatory reporting), schools must ensure that their sports arrangements meet child safe organisation requirements (as set out in the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations or the specific version of them adopted in each state or territory).

Some key action areas from the National Principles most relevant to sports coaching and sports volunteers are:

• a child safety culture is championed at every level within the organisation and child safety policies are implemented at every level including a code of conduct for staff and volunteers
• staff and volunteers understand their child safety responsibilities and are attuned to signs of harm and facilitate children to raise their concerns
• staff and volunteers understand, support, and respond to children’s diverse needs and circumstances
• recruitment advertising, referee checks and pre-employment screening emphasise child safety and wellbeing including background checking and working with children checks
• all staff and volunteers receive appropriate induction and are aware of their responsibilities to children and young people, including record keeping, information sharing and reporting obligations
• ongoing supervision and people management is focused on child safety and wellbeing
• accessible child focused complaints handling is available for reporting child safety and wellbeing complaints or concerns and these are taken seriously and responded to promptly and thoroughly
• staff and volunteers are trained and supported to effectively implement child safety and wellbeing policies, receive training in indicators of harm, in how to respond effectively to child safety and wellbeing issues and are trained in how to build culturally safe environments
• staff and volunteers identify and mitigate risks in online and physical environments and the online environment is used in accordance with the school’s code of conduct and child safety and wellbeing policies
• organisations that provide services and facilities (such as sports contractors) have effective child safe policies and procedures
• child safe practices, policies and procedures are regularly reviewed and evaluated and issues and concerns are examined to identify causes and systemic failures
• policies and procedures are in place that address the National Principles and are accessible and easy to understand.

How to Manage These Risks

In addition to very carefully selecting coaches and volunteers, here are five suggested ways that schools can manage coaching risks:

1. induction and training
2. ongoing support and supervision
3. vendor due diligence
4. incident reporting
5. visible and accessible complaints handling systems.

1. Induction and Training

The purpose of training is to change behaviour so that those trained understand and act in accordance with the organisation’s requirements. Training supports the development of the desired organisational culture, including a child safe culture, and helps manage risk and ensure compliance. Training should be targeted and appropriate for coaching roles and responsibilities including for volunteers. Training should be validated by testing and checking and training records must be kept.

Induction and ongoing training must address two aspects of coaching risks.

Firstly, training must address the child protection requirements, including as set out in the National Principles as well as the mandatory training required by school regulators that schools are required to implement for staff and volunteers. This should occur at induction and at least annually thereafter as refresher training. This training should be provided to contractors or, if that is not appropriate, schools should ensure that the contractor company trains their staff in child safety.

Secondly, schools should either provide training for coaches to address other coaching risks or ensure that they have completed the following types of training:

• sports specific training - Level 1, 2 or 3 courses (or other sport specific progression pathways)
• online training courses, for example, from the Australian Sport Learning Centre
• training on first aid for sports
• training in a wide range of school policies such as student discipline and behaviour management, transport policies, emergency management, injury management, student code of conduct, parent and spectator codes of behaviour, school uniform requirements, anti-bullying and pastoral care policies. This should occur at induction, with refresher training as needed.

2. Ongoing Support and Supervision

This includes formal and informal support and mentoring as well as supervision and monitoring of coaches’ performance. There should be clear duty statements for coaches and sports volunteers and the school should provide policies including a code of conduct. Supervision also includes ensuring that any non-compliance or concerns raised are investigated and addressed.

3. Vendor Due Diligence

Schools should undertake a range of due diligence checking for sports contractors including ensuring that they implement child safe recruitment and background checking practices and have clear child safe policies. Due diligence should also include obtaining records of relevant staff training (in child protection, specific sport coaching and first aid), staff experience and qualifications and equipment maintenance records. Due diligence also includes reference checking: asking for names and contacts of other schools or organisations that use the contractor’s services so they can be contacted by the school to obtain further information on child protection practices, safety incidents and accident reports and investigations that involved the relevant coaches or the sports contractor, and general feedback on their conduct.

This same due diligence should be applied when selecting coaches and volunteers directly engaged by the school.

4. Incident Reporting

Coaches and volunteers must record incidents, accidents and near misses including injury management and first aid records. Incidents, accidents and near misses should be investigated and appropriate action taken as needed. Incident reporting can provide information on coaching performance and be used to support further targeted training or increased supervision and mentoring.

5. Visible and Accessible Complaints Handling Systems

It is vital that schools have information to enable them to determine whether coaches are acting appropriately, supporting child safety and behaving in a manner consistent with school policies and administrative requirements. The school must encourage and support complaints handling with systems for lodging complaints accessible to students and parents. There must be student and community confidence in the complaints handling system including:

• confidentiality of complaints
• that complainants suffer no detriment
• that complaints will be taken seriously and thoroughly investigated in a timely manner.

Conclusion

Sports coaches and volunteers are frontline staff and, as such, are required to make good risk management decisions, behave appropriately and support and develop a child safe environment in line with school policies and legal and regulatory requirements. They have direct involvement with many significant frontline risks. Schools must manage these risks by supporting, monitoring, training and supervising sports coaches and volunteers and must ensure they know what to do and what is expected of them.