SPORTS DEVELOPMENT Community Sports Clubs

Tynedale has a wealth of sports clubs, many of which are ran by enthusiastic volunteers. The increased legislation placed on volunteers has made running a sports club a more onerous task– gone are the days when people would take a group of children for a kick about.

Now clubs need to consider the following:

· Qualifying coaches

· Regular CRB checks

· Child Welfare policies and procedures within junior clubs

· Club Mark accreditation

· First Aid and risk assessment training

· Funding applications

The Tynedale Sports Development team are on hand to assist clubs with all of the above.

Club development is one of our priority actions. Throughout 2005 and 2006 we received funding from the European Social Fund and Northern Rock Foundation. From this we formed the Tynedale Club Development Project to assist both new and existing sports clubs develop. In December 2006 the project finished, however Leisure Tynedale are pro-actively seeking funding to create additional resources for club development.

Tynedale Club Database

Our officers keep up-to-date records on our local clubs. We are developing a database that not only gives us contact information, but will tell us the ‘health’ of clubs, including club needs or how many qualified coaches, volunteers and players each club has. We can use this information to identify issues effecting more than one of our clubs, which may then be solved collectively.

Club Mark

Club Mark is a quality mark for sports clubs. Some National Governing Bodies have branded their own Club Mark so you may hear of Charter Standard for football clubs, Swim 21 from the ASA, netball have CAPS, tennis have ‘Club Vision’, athletics ‘Club Future’ and cricket have ECB Club Mark. For those governing bodies without their own, Sport England have a generic award. Club Mark is then broken into gold, silver and bronze.

Clubs who register for Club Mark will receive a pack with details of evidence, documents and policies they require. To make it easier the pack also contains much of the necessary documentation which can be easily adapted to the club.

Club Mark is important to us as it means that we see the quality in our local clubs. A club with the award will have qualified coaches, good working practices and be managed effectively.

Club Mark is important to clubs as an increasing number of funding groups will accept it as a measure of quality and are more likely to approve funding to accredited clubs.

Helping clubs gain Club Mark is one of our priorities and therefore we are happy to help clubs achieve it.

Club Mark is a brand of Sport England. To visit the Sport England website please click here