Private football coaching for children

What an affiliated club has that a private arrangement does 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 requires the chair, secretary, treasurer and welfare officer to have completed its safeguarding course for committee members. It also requires coaches working with youth teams at affiliated clubs to be named against their team, DBS-checked and safeguarding-trained. Our safeguarding guide covers what that looks like at a club.

Those requirements attach to the affiliated club. When you book a coach directly, they do not automatically follow the booking.

That does not mean nothing is in place. A coaching business or soccer school may have its own safeguarding policy, its own designated person for concerns, a complaints procedure and insurance. The point is that you have to ask rather than assume, so ask what structure the coach or the business has of its own: who receives a concern, what policy applies, and what happens if you need to complain.

That is not a statement about any individual coach, and coaches work independently for all sorts of ordinary reasons. It means the reassurance a parent reasonably assumes is there has to be established rather than assumed.

The DBS position changed in January 2026

This is the part where older advice is out of date, because it was written before the change.

Until 21 January 2026, a self-employed person could only apply for a basic DBS check. A basic check shows unspent convictions and conditional cautions. An enhanced check can contain more than that, and an enhanced check with barred list information can also show whether the person is barred from the relevant regulated activity where the role is eligible. An enhanced check had to be applied for by an employing organisation, so a coach working entirely for themselves had no route to one.

From 21 January 2026 (opens in a new tab), self-employed people who are paid for their work can apply for an enhanced check, or an enhanced check with barred list information, through a DBS umbrella body (opens in a new tab), provided the role is eligible. The eligibility rules themselves did not change. Whether a particular coaching arrangement qualifies depends on the role rather than on the job title.

One more distinction is worth knowing. A DBS certificate obtained privately is not automatically the same thing as an FA-accepted DBS recorded against an affiliated football role. Ask which one you are being shown rather than treating every claim of being DBS-checked as identical.

Four things follow for a parent.

• Being DBS-checked is not one thing. Ask which level. A basic certificate and an enhanced certificate with a barred list check are very different documents.
• You cannot arrange the check yourself. If you are booking a self-employed coach directly, they apply through a DBS umbrella body where the role is eligible. If the coach works for, or provides their services through, an organisation, that organisation may arrange the appropriate eligible check instead.
• You can ask to see the original certificate. GOV.UK is specific that this means the original, not a copy or a photograph.
• If an enhanced certificate, or an enhanced certificate with barred list information, is registered with the DBS Update Service, you can carry out a free status check with the coach's consent, but only where you are legally entitled to ask for that level of check for the role, and the certificate has to match the relevant workforce and level. The coach subscribes to the Update Service (opens in a new tab) themselves, and basic checks are not covered by it.

If a coach says they cannot get an enhanced check simply because they are self-employed, that advice is out of date. Since 21 January 2026 they can apply through an umbrella body where the role is eligible. Eligibility still depends on the work they actually do, so an enhanced check may still be unavailable for a reason that has nothing to do with self-employment.

What else to ask before you book

• Which coaching qualifications they hold, and when they last did any coaching education.
• Which safeguarding training they have done and when. Ask for the course name, not just a yes.
• Whether they hold a current first aid qualification.
• What insurance they carry, and ask to see it.
• Whether they also coach for an affiliated club, and which club and County FA. That gives you an additional football safeguarding route if a concern relates to their conduct, but do not assume the private session itself is club activity or covered by the club's policies.
• Whether other families can be contacted for a reference.
• Where sessions happen, who else is present, and whether you can stay.

A professional coach should be able to answer these questions clearly. If an answer is vague, or you cannot verify it, do not fill in the gap yourself.

One-to-one sessions

A private session may be one adult and one child. These are our recommendations rather than universal FA club rules, because a private booking does not automatically fall under an affiliated club's rules or safeguarding structure.

• Sessions in a public or overlooked space rather than somewhere closed off.
• You stay, or you are free to arrive unannounced.
• No lifts alone.
• Arrangements go through you rather than directly to your child, and messaging goes to your phone, not theirs.
• If a session moves venue or time at short notice, you are told before it happens rather than after.

None of this implies anything about the coach. It is the arrangement you would want in place with anybody.

If something concerns you

Where the coach is connected to an affiliated club or registered with a County FA, the football routes are open to you: the club or league welfare officer, the County FA Designated Safeguarding Officer, and the FA safeguarding team. Our safeguarding guide says how each works.

Where the coach is entirely independent, those routes may not apply, and the answer is the same as it would be anywhere outside football. If you are worried that a child is at risk of abuse or neglect, you can contact the children's social care team at the child's local council. Call 999 if a child is in immediate danger. If you believe a crime has been committed and it is not an emergency, contact the police on 101. For online sexual abuse or grooming, the FA points parents to the CEOP Safety Centre, which is part of the National Crime Agency. The NSPCC helpline can give advice if you want to talk a concern through before deciding what to do.

You do not need to be certain before you raise something.

Is private coaching the right thing for your child?

We are not going to tell you whether it works, because we have no basis for that. What is worth thinking through before you book.

• Whether your child wants it, and whose idea it was.
• What you are hoping it changes, described specifically enough that you would know whether it happened.
• What their club coach thinks, and whether the sessions will pull in the same direction as the coaching they already get.
• How it fits alongside training, matches, school and everything else in the week.
• What happens if your child stops enjoying it.

Talking to the club coach first is worth doing anyway. They see your child play every week and the conversation costs nothing. If the coaching is being offered as a route to something bigger, our guides to football trials and to the difference between a club, academy, football school or development centre are worth reading alongside this one.

The practical side

• What a session includes, how long it lasts and where it happens.
• What happens if you cancel, and what happens if they do.
• What happens if the weather takes the session out.
• Whether you are paying a business or an individual, and what the payment arrangement is.
• How to end the arrangement if it is not working.

Get the answers before the first session rather than after the fourth.

Elsewhere in the UK

DBS checks cover England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland run their own criminal record disclosure systems, so the January 2026 change described here does not carry across. Scotland uses the Protecting Vulnerable Groups scheme, managed by Disclosure Scotland. Northern Ireland uses AccessNI. Check the current position with whichever applies to you rather than assuming the England position holds.

For anything about football coaching qualifications or safeguarding requirements, start with the association that covers you.

• England: the Football Association (opens in a new tab).
• Scotland: the Scottish Football Association (opens in a new tab).
• Wales: the Football Association of Wales (opens in a new tab).
• Northern Ireland: the Irish Football Association (opens in a new tab).

Coaches listed on FindMeFootball

FindMeFootball lists independent coaches, with the sessions they offer and their prices, alongside the clubs and tournaments. If you are looking for private coaching, that is a place to start.

It does not change anything on this page. A listing is a coach telling you what they offer. Where a coach page shows a DBS check, first aid or insurance, it shows what the coach has declared, labelled as the coach's own statement that we have not checked. It is not us checking their qualifications, their training or their criminal record check, and it is not a recommendation of one coach over another. The questions in this guide are still yours to ask, and the answers are still the coach's to give.

Find a club near you

Browse the clubs we list by location and age group. If your child is not yet at a club, that is the conversation to have first, and our guide to choosing a grassroots football club covers what to look for.