The club welfare officer

The short version

Every affiliated club with youth teams needs a welfare officer, and the role is tied to the club's affiliation rather than being optional.

You need an in-date FA-accepted enhanced check with children's barred list information, the Safeguarding Children Course, the Welfare Officers Course and Safeguarding for Committee Members. The Welfare Officers Course is mandatory for the role and has a minimum age of 18.

For your own FA check, contact your County FA Designated Safeguarding Officer; a coach or manager normally goes to the club welfare officer. Your County FA DSO is also your first point of contact for advice and support.

Your job is to be findable, to receive concerns, and to pass them on properly. It is not to investigate.

The rules changed on 1 September 2026 and the club should review who is now in regulated activity. You are well placed to lead or coordinate that review; the committee retains the club responsibility.

What the role is, and what it is not

The FA requires every affiliated club to have a safeguarding children policy and a club welfare officer who is DBS-checked and safeguarding-trained. It also requires the chair, secretary, treasurer and welfare officer to have completed its safeguarding course for committee members. That is set out on the FA's own parents and carers page (opens in a new tab), which is worth reading precisely because it is written for the people who will come to you.

What the job is:

• Being the named person a parent, player or volunteer can go to, and being genuinely findable.
• Receiving concerns, recording them, and passing them to the right place promptly.
• Making sure the people at your club who need checks and training have them, and that they stay in date.
• Helping the club put safeguarding into how it actually runs: photography, communication, trips, tournaments, recruitment.
• Being the club's link to the County FA Designated Safeguarding Officer.

What the job is not:

• It is not investigating. You gather what you are told, you do not interrogate anybody, and you do not decide whether something happened.
• It is not deciding for yourself whether a safeguarding concern is serious enough to report. If you are unsure, seek advice from your County FA Designated Safeguarding Officer rather than holding the concern back.
• It is not being the only person responsible for safeguarding. The committee is, and you are the one who holds the process.
• It is not a disciplinary role, and it is not there to settle arguments about selection or subs.

What you need before you take it on

For the wider club workforce, the FA's safer recruitment and DBS checks page (opens in a new tab) sets out that checks must be FA-accepted disclosures issued within the last three years, and that leagues and clubs are responsible for making sure everyone who needs one has one. Note that its shorthand about potentially unsupervised roles predates the September 2026 change described below, so use the current DBS eligibility guidance (opens in a new tab) when you are working out what level a particular role needs.

For the role itself, the FA's own welfare officers page (opens in a new tab) sets out two things: attend the Safeguarding Children and Welfare Officer courses, and hold an in-date FA-accepted enhanced check with children's barring list information.

The Welfare Officers Course (opens in a new tab) is mandatory for anyone taking on the role and has a minimum age of 18. Your Safeguarding Children qualification has to be in date before you can complete it, and an accepted FA criminal record check is mandatory for the role, so the advice is to have at least submitted your DBS application before you attend. The Safeguarding Children qualification is valid for two years and is renewed by retaking the course.

You also need Safeguarding for Committee Members (opens in a new tab). The chair, secretary and treasurer must complete it too; The FA states that these four roles must complete the course to enable clubs with under-18 teams to affiliate.

Your own check does not go through another club official. A coach or manager goes to their club welfare officer; a club welfare officer contacts the County FA Designated Safeguarding Officer (opens in a new tab), who is also your first point of contact for advice and support. Once you are set up, the FA Club Portal and online safeguarding service let authorised club officers track the safeguarding education and check status of club officials, managers and coaches.

If you already hold a DBS certificate from work, it is not automatically an FA-accepted disclosure for a football role. Our guide to becoming a grassroots football coach covers that in more detail.

The change on 1 September 2026, and what it means for your club

This is the live job for welfare officers this season. From 1 September 2026 the supervision exemption was removed from the definition of regulated activity with children (opens in a new tab) in England and Wales.

Before that date, somebody who taught, trained, instructed, cared for or supervised children could fall outside regulated activity if another person in regulated activity supervised them sufficiently. That exemption has gone. Where the work happens on more than three days in any 30-day period, or overnight between 2am and 6am, the role can now be regulated activity even though somebody supervises it.

In a football club, the people this reaches are the ones who were supervised: assistant coaches, helpers who run drills under a head coach, anybody who was assessed as sufficiently supervised and therefore checked at a lower level. Where the criteria are met, the role is eligible for an enhanced DBS check with children's barred list information.

GOV.UK guidance (opens in a new tab) asks organisations to identify roles where people teach, train, instruct, care for or supervise children and are currently supervised by somebody else in regulated activity, and then to check whether any of those people's certificates need updating to the relevant level. That is a club responsibility rather than a personal one: the committee owns it, and you are the person best placed to lead or coordinate it.

Two things it does not do, and the government's own myth-busting page (opens in a new tab) is explicit about both. It does not create a new requirement for any organisation to carry out DBS checks, and it does not make barred list information available for every role involving children. Whether a check is appropriate, and at what level, still depends on the role and the work actually being done. If you are unsure about a particular role, the DBS eligibility guidance (opens in a new tab) and your County FA are the places to go.

When somebody brings you a concern

This is the part of the role that matters and the part people rehearse least. The principles are short.

• Listen, stay calm, and let the person say what they want to say.
• Do not promise confidentiality, and do not promise a particular outcome.
• Explain that other people will need to be involved in order to help.
• Do not investigate, and do not go and ask the person the concern is about.
• Write down what you were told, in the words you were told it, as soon as you can.
• Pass it on promptly.

Where it goes depends on what it is.

A safeguarding concern within football: use football's safeguarding network. As the club welfare officer, your County FA Designated Safeguarding Officer (opens in a new tab) is your first point of contact for advice and guidance; the FA Safeguarding Team is another reporting route, and where a league is involved its welfare officer may also be relevant.

A statutory referral is a separate question. Working Together to Safeguard Children (opens in a new tab) says anyone with concerns should consider whether a referral to local authority children's social care is needed, and make one immediately where there is concern that a child is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm. Do not hold that referral while you wait for football advice.

If a child is in immediate danger, call 999.

An allegation about an adult who works with children: follow your local authority's allegations procedure and seek advice from the local authority designated officer where the threshold may be met. Tell your County FA DSO.

Poor practice or another welfare concern that is not a child-protection matter: follow the club's safeguarding or poor-practice procedure, and use your County FA DSO (opens in a new tab) for advice where needed.

On information sharing, do not let a consent question delay a referral. The ICO is clear (opens in a new tab) that consent is not required to share a child's personal data for safeguarding purposes where another lawful basis applies, and that consent may not be the appropriate lawful basis in a safeguarding situation. Share what is necessary, with the people who need it, and no more.

Working Together to Safeguard Children (opens in a new tab) is the statutory framework behind all of this, and the NSPCC's Child Protection in Sport Unit (opens in a new tab) publishes material written for clubs rather than for local authorities.

The parts of the job that are not about crises

The rest of the role is quieter than the section above.

Risk assessments (opens in a new tab). The FA publishes guidance and a template. It names a club lead, a second adult club official and a designated safeguarding person, and records emergency arrangements including where the defibrillator is and how an ambulance gets in. A risk assessment upload is required as part of the sanctioning workflow for a sanctioned tournament, and the template is useful well beyond that.

Photography and filming (opens in a new tab). Written parental consent is needed before a player's image is used in the public domain, an image should not be reused for a purpose other than the one agreed, and for close-up official photography the organiser needs a workable way of identifying children who should not be photographed.

Websites and social media (opens in a new tab). The guidance asks clubs to appoint an adult to monitor content, says not to host under-18s' contact details or details that make a child easier to approach outside football, and says not to post match results for teams under 11 on club and league websites and social media. Note that is guidance about your own channels: competition rules separately permit results to be published from certain permitted trophy events at Under 8 to Under 11, so check which situation you are in. It also says under-16s should not be in the message groups officials and parents use to run a team. There is more in the FA's section on the digital world (opens in a new tab).

Recruitment. Our guide to recruiting players covers what a club can and cannot put in an advert for children, which is a welfare officer question as much as a marketing one.

Making yourself findable

A welfare officer nobody can name is not doing the job, however well the paperwork is kept.

• Get your name and a contact route onto the club website, the noticeboard and the welcome pack.
• Introduce yourself to parents at the start of the season rather than waiting to be needed.
• Use a club contact route rather than a personal mobile number where you can.
• Make sure every manager knows who you are and what to do if something comes up at an away game or a tournament.

If your club is listed on FindMeFootball, claiming the listing lets you keep the contact route accurate. There is no charge to claim a listing.

Elsewhere in the UK

Safeguarding requirements and criminal record checks are organised separately in each nation. DBS covers England and Wales. Scotland uses the Protecting Vulnerable Groups scheme through Disclosure Scotland, and Northern Ireland uses AccessNI. Start with the association that covers you.

• England: the Football Association and your County FA.
• Scotland: the Scottish Football Association.
• Wales: the Football Association of Wales.
• Northern Ireland: the Irish Football Association.

More help

• Safeguarding in grassroots football
• How to become a grassroots football coach
• Recruiting players for a grassroots team
• How to start a grassroots football club
• The FA safeguarding downloads directory (opens in a new tab)