Safeguarding on Show: Put Your Welfare Officer Where Parents Can Actually Find Them

Try this on Saturday morning. Stop a parent on the touchline and ask them who your club's welfare officer is, and how they'd contact them at ten o'clock on a Tuesday night if something was worrying them.

At a lot of clubs the honest answer is a shrug, or the name of someone who stepped down two seasons ago.

Almost every affiliated club has a safeguarding policy and a welfare officer. It's a condition of affiliation. Far fewer put either of them anywhere a parent can actually find them. This guide fixes that in about thirty minutes: what the FA actually asks for, what goes on a safeguarding page, where to put it, and what you should never publish.

What the FA actually requires

All of this is from The FA's own safeguarding pages and guidance notes, checked on 23 October 2026.

• Every affiliated club needs a Safeguarding Children Policy and a Club Welfare Officer (CWO). The FA says this in plain terms in its guidance for parents and carers.
• The CWO needs an FA-accepted Enhanced DBS check with Children's Barred List, issued within the last three years. So does anyone aged 16 or over in a potentially unsupervised role with under-18s: coaches, managers, first-aiders and other club roles. For volunteers it costs £11 (the FA's admin fee; there's no government charge). Non-volunteers pay £52.
• The CWO must do the FA's Welfare Officer course, which The FA describes as mandatory for grassroots welfare officers. Coaches working with under-18s need the Safeguarding Children course, which gives a two-year certificate.
• Committee members need the free Safeguarding for Committee Members course. The FA lists it as required for secretaries, chairs, welfare officers and treasurers.
• Adult clubs aren't off the hook. The FA's guidance on appointing welfare officers for open-age football (updated October 2026) says that where under-18s play in open-age teams, the adult welfare officer needs a current DBS check too. If your Saturday side has a 17-year-old on the bench, that's you.

Now the bit that surprises people. There's no FA rule that says "publish this on your website". What The FA's club safeguarding checklist for welfare officers says is that you should share the policy with parents and officials at the start of every season, that "placing this information on your club website (assuming you have one) is always helpful," and that everyone — officials, members and parents — should be "clear as to who the welfare officer(s) is/are and how to contact them."

You can't make everyone clear without putting it somewhere permanent. For most clubs, that's the website.

Why the website matters more than you think

The FA's advice to parents tells them to look at a club's website and social pages, and to ask how they can contact the people running their child's team, before they sign up. So a parent comparing two under-9s sides on a Sunday night is doing exactly what The FA told them to do. If one club has a clear safeguarding page and the other has nothing, that's a decision made before anyone has met a coach.

There's a second audience too: AI search. When someone asks an AI assistant "does [your club] have a welfare officer?", it can only answer from what's published. We covered how those answers get built in our AI search visibility guide.

The reason that matters most: a worried child or parent doesn't email the chair. If the route to the welfare officer takes more than two clicks, plenty of concerns never get raised.

The safeguarding page: what goes on it

One page, titled "Safeguarding" (not "Welfare", not "Policies", and not buried in "About us"). Nine things:

1. Who your welfare officer is. Name, the teams they cover (youth, adult, disability) and a role email address. A photo helps parents recognise them at the ground, but only with their agreement. If you have more than one welfare officer, list each with their remit.
2. How to raise a concern, in order. Your welfare officer first. Then your County FA's Designated Safeguarding Officer (link to your County FA's safeguarding page). Then The FA's Safeguarding Team on 0800 169 1863 or Safeguarding@TheFA.com. The NSPCC helpline is 0808 800 5000. If a child is in immediate danger, call 999.
3. A line for children themselves. Childline is 0800 1111, free, any time. Put it in words a ten-year-old understands.
4. The policy itself. Your Safeguarding Children Policy as a downloadable PDF, plus your adults policy if you run adult or disability teams. Show the date it was adopted and when it's next reviewed.
5. Your DBS position. One sentence: "Everyone in a role working with under-18s at our club holds an in-date FA Enhanced DBS check." No names, no certificate numbers.
6. Codes of conduct. The FA's Respect codes for players, parents and carers, coaches and spectators. Parents are expected to sign up to these anyway.
7. Photography and filming. What you do and don't post, and how consent works. Our guide to blurring junior photos covers the practical side.
8. How the club communicates with under-18s. Club accounts, not personal ones. Messages go through parents or group channels, never private one-to-one chats. The FA's checklist says club social pages should state clearly that parental consent is required.
9. Where else to get help. The FA checklist suggests signposting CEOP, Kidscape, Childline and the Anti-Bullying Alliance. A short list with links is enough.

Finish with a "last checked" date. It's the single most useful line on the page, because it tells a parent whether anyone is looking after it.

Where to put it

A good page nobody can find is still a hidden page.

• A "Safeguarding" link in the footer of every page, or in the main menu if you have room. Parents shouldn't need to guess.
• A short block on every junior team page: "Our welfare officer is [name] — welfare@yourclub.co.uk" with a link to the full page.
• On the registration or sign-up form, so every new family sees it before they pay a penny.
• A QR code on the clubhouse noticeboard linking straight to the page.
• Pinned in parents' WhatsApp groups and your Facebook Page. Re-pin it at the start of every season.
• In your welcome pack. The FA checklist names welcome packs specifically.

What you should never publish

Visible doesn't mean everything.

• No personal mobile numbers or home email addresses. Set up a role address (welfare@yourclub) that forwards to whoever holds the role. When the welfare officer changes, you update one forwarding rule, not every page and poster. We made the same point about scrapers and AI crawlers in our guide to Meta's new crawling terms.
• No details of any concern, case or disciplinary matter. Ever.
• No DBS details. "Everyone is checked" is the right level.
• No children's full names next to photos. First names at most, and only with consent.
• No invitation to raise concerns in public comments. Every route on the page should be private: email, phone, or a person.

Keep it current, or it's worse than nothing

The commonest failure isn't a missing page. It's a page naming a welfare officer who left. A parent who emails a dead address and hears nothing back has learned the club doesn't respond.

Three habits fix it:

• Review it at affiliation time every summer, alongside the rest of your club policy pack. Same meeting, same minute.
• Update it the same week the role changes hands. Make it part of the handover, not an afterthought.
• Check your policy is the current FA template. The FA republished its adult safeguarding policy template and its guidance on appointing open-age welfare officers this month (both dated October 2026). If your club's policy was copied from a template years ago, download the latest and compare.

The thirty-minute job

One volunteer, one evening:

1. Confirm who your welfare officer(s) are and that their DBS and course are in date on the FA Club Portal.
2. Set up the welfare@ role email and test it.
3. Build the safeguarding page using the nine items above.
4. Add the footer link and the team-page block.
5. Print a QR code for the noticeboard and pin the link in parent groups.
6. Ask someone outside the committee to find the page from your homepage. If it takes them longer than ten seconds, move the link.

Then ask that Saturday-morning question again in a month. You want every parent to know the answer.

Same principle for fundraising: if you run prize draws or a club lottery, use a platform like PlayFundWin that keeps entrant details off public club pages altogether.

FA requirements and contact numbers above were checked on The FA's safeguarding pages on 23 October 2026. Rules and course names do change, so check your County FA's guidance before your next affiliation.

Up the volunteers. Non-league — making the difference.