Birmingham County FA Safeguarding And Welfare
Birmingham County FA offers a range of safeguarding services and training to help create a safe and enjoyable football experience for everyone
We ensure safeguarding requirements are met as a mandatory part of club affiliation. We support clubs to maintain these standards, which includes making unannounced safeguarding visits.
Here are details of the current safeguarding support services we offer:
Forthcoming safeguarding courses and workshops
The FA offer a range of safeguarding services and training to help create a safe and enjoyable football experience for everyone. Birmingham County FA ensure safeguarding requirements are met as a mandatory part of club affiliation. We support clubs to maintain these standards, which includes making unannounced safeguarding visits.
How we handle reported concerns
Concerns within your club
If you are concerned about your child or another child in your club, you should contact your Club Welfare Officer (CWO) in the first instance. You should be given the contact details of the CWO at the start of the season. If you do not know who your CWO is, speak to a coach in your club and ask for their details. The CWO will normally deal with cases of poor practice and behaviour within your club.
Safeguarding & Welfare Officer
For concerns of a serious nature, or for advice and guidance, please contact County Welfare Officer via email: Safeguarding@BirminghamFA.com
Support for Welfare Officers
As you know RESPECT is The FA's direct response to a clear message from the grassroots game. We must improve standards of behaviour - on and off the field.
Parental behaviour is one of the main reasons why young players drop out of the game. Poor behaviour by coaches, parents and players has also seen a number of officials drop out each season.
The role of the Club Welfare Officer (CWO) is to deal with poor practice cases within their club, give advice and guidance whilst being the lead on DBS' within the club.
CWO's should always report more serious welfare cases to The FA via the County Welfare Officer.
OBTAINING A DISCLOSURE AND BARRING SERVICE CHECK (DBS)
Coaches working within an affiliated youth football club must complete their Disclosure And Barring Service Check (DBS) with their club. This can be carried out via the Club Welfare Officer.
You can complete an online application via a link provided by the County FA, which you can also find in the guidance documents below:
dbs guidance documents
Verification for this method is only currently available by coming to our offices to meet with a County verifier. The cost for this method is £10. Please note, anyone receiving a wage from football must pay the additional government charge of £44.
When attending a verification meeting, please ensure that you bring along all of the correct documents which are detailed in the guidance notes.
The verifier has to sign a legal declaration that they have seen all the correct documents so the County FA cannot be held responsible for incomplete applications, which result in the applicant having to attend another verification meeting.
Please see a useful video guide below to learn more about obtaining a DBS check.
If you are on Whole Game System as the Club Welfare Officer, please contact fachecks@thefa.com to register as the verifier.
The system recognises your email address as the verifier so you will need use a different email address to register as an applicant.
The online system shows the completion of the DBS process. Once that process is completed, the FA makes its decision based on the content.
There can be a few weeks delay between completion of the DBS process and it showing as accepted on Whole Game System.
The DBS certificate is not a certificate of acceptance, it is just part of the process. The only way to see if they are accepted is on member services.