Vinny Halsall, FA physical education officer (West), looks at how coaches can engage parents more, to help create an environment that will allow players to keep enjoying the game.

It’s getting towards the end of another long week. As usual, the challenges of trying to balance family, work and coaching commitments during Covid-19 have been huge. You start to wrap up from work, which in the current climate might be shutting the laptop down in your make-shift office, and your mind turns to your grassroots football commitment this weekend. You then think: I’m really looking forward to catching up with our young players tomorrow morning, but there are so many things that I need to get sorted out!

If this has happened to you this year, before ploughing on, I would suggest there has never been a greater opportunity to re-evaluate the role that parents play in supporting our work as grassroots coaches. In recognising that your players are their children, how can we engage the adults more to help create the best possible sporting environment to sustain their children’s love of physical activity, and, more specifically, the game of football?

A good starting point is that we know all parents want their children to enjoy fabulous experiences. So here are a few suggestions to help create a win-win situation for you and the parents of your players. As a grassroots volunteer coach, I’ve experimented with these over the past four years. While they require additional thinking and planning time, they’ve undoubtedly helped to establish an enjoyable, safe and positive environment for young players, parents and coaches alike.

Philosophy familiarity

Share (or reshare) your club philosophy with a few key messages, ideally underpinned by values which parents can understand and recognise. For example, my grassroots club, where I currently co-coach the U12s, emphasises developing the person before the player. The use of the FA 4 Corner Model is useful here as it shines a light on whole child development which will also resonate with many parents, not least by providing examples such as developing communication, cooperation and collaboration skills (social corner) as well as decision-making, self-esteem and resilience (psychological corner).

Mantra with meaning

Try to create a simple mantra that summarises the intentions of your grassroots club. We currently use the acronym E S F C (our club initials) which stands for:

• Enjoyment
• Sportsmanship
• Friendship
• Competition

By adding detail to explain how these can be achieved, you can involve your parents in a discussion about how they might use their own skills and experience to bring these to life.

Setting the scene for the season

Arrange a meeting with your parents to outline how they can help to make the programme this season run smoothly. Encourage ideas from them in terms of the contributions that they might make, which doesn’t have to be just around practice sessions and matchdays; there might be social events, including remote ones, that can help to keep your youngsters connected. Also, be open and honest by explaining that you (and your assistant if you have one) don’t have all the answers.

Turn matchday mania into smiles

By striving together and sharing the workload, all the adults at your club can make the grassroots experience positive for all. Think about creating a simple spreadsheet with a list of jobs (let’s go with an example for a game that you’re hosting) which is likely to include: matchday equipment, setting up goals, FA Respect barrier, refreshments, referee plus assistants. Add to this the Covid compliance such as NHS QR code, First Aid kit including PPE, sanitiser spray for balls, goals, corner flags.

By outlining to parents the simple things that they can do to help, it can enable you to focus on your role as coach: player availability, calculating equal game time, rotation of positions, matchday focus and individual challenges - this is before a ball has even been kicked!

Hopefully, the above suggestions can provide some actions that you can try out over forthcoming weeks and months. Remember, it takes time to change a culture and how people think and act. Therefore, if you’re just starting your coaching journey with a young age group, try to embed some of the above from the outset. For those already on that journey, try small changes and aim to build a collaborative way of working over a period of time. Patience and persistence are the key.

You can find another source of ideas from this 'working with parents in sport' blog. This might help you to consider the question: Are their parents part of the team, or do you leave them on the bench?

Get in touch at:

vincent.halsall@thefa.com

Twitter: @vphalsall

What do you think of Vinny’s ideas? Let us know in the comments below!