School Of Fish

Safeguarding In Practice

How to use this guidance

This is the working companion to the School Of Fish Safeguarding Children and Vulnerable Adults Policy. The policy sets the rules. This sets out how those rules look on the bank, in the moment, when something happens and you have to decide what to do.

Read it before you coach your first session, and again before each season. It does not replace your safeguarding training, your DBS, or the policy. Where this guidance and the policy ever differ, the policy is the authority.

Designated Safeguarding Lead: Ulvis Strokss. 07713 177685. safeguarding@schooloffish.co.uk. If a child is in immediate danger, ring 999 first, then the DSL.

The four things that matter most

If you remember nothing else from this page, remember these.

You are not the investigator. Your job is to notice, to listen, to write it down, and to pass it on. It is never to establish whether something is true.
You cannot promise secrecy. If a child asks you to keep a secret before they tell you something, you say honestly that you might have to tell one person whose job is to keep them safe.
You report immediately. Not at the end of the session, not at the end of the week, not once you have thought about it. The DSL decides what happens next, and they can only decide with what you give them.
A concern you are unsure about is still a concern. Nobody at School Of Fish has ever been criticised for raising something that turned out to be nothing.

The most common safeguarding failure in any sport is not a coach doing something wrong. It is a coach noticing something, deciding it was probably nothing, and saying nothing.

If a child tells you something

A disclosure rarely arrives as a clear statement. It usually comes sideways, mid-session, while the child is looking at the water rather than at you. That is not an accident. Doing something with their hands makes it easier to say.

What to do

Let them speak. Do not stop them to fetch another adult. If they have started, let them finish.
Stay calm and stay with it. Your face matters more than your words. Shock, anger or distress on your face can stop a child mid-sentence.
Use open, non-leading prompts only. "Can you tell me more about that?" is fine. "Did he hit you?" is not.
Accept what they say without judging it. You do not need to decide whether it is true.
Tell them they were right to tell you. Say it clearly.
Be honest about what happens next. "I am going to tell Ulvis, because it is his job to help keep you safe. I will tell you when I have."

What never to do

Never promise to keep it secret. If asked before they speak, say: "I can not promise that, but I will only tell the people who need to know to help."
Never ask leading questions, never suggest names, never fill in gaps for them.
Never interview the child, and never ask them to repeat the account for someone else.
Never confront the person the child has named, or tell a parent before speaking to the DSL. If a parent is the subject of the concern, telling them can put the child in danger.
Never delay because you are not certain.

If the child is neurodivergent

Everything above still applies, with three adjustments we already use across School Of Fish coaching.

Words include typed, written, drawn and AAC. A disclosure does not have to be spoken to be a disclosure, and where this page says record their own words, that covers whatever form the words arrived in. Keep the original if it was written or typed.
Give processing time. Count five before you repeat yourself. Silence after a hard sentence is thinking, not the end of it, and filling that silence is how coaches accidentally lead a child.
Keep your language literal. Open prompts still work, but "can you tell me more about that?" may be too vague to act on. "What happened next?" is easier to answer, and a literal thinker may answer only exactly what you asked, which is not evasion.

Distress that looks like misbehaviour may be communication. A child who shuts down or melts down mid-conversation is telling you something, and the response is to reduce demand, not to press on.

The hardest moment. A child says "promise you will not tell anyone" and then goes quiet, waiting. Do not promise. Say: "I can not promise to keep it to myself, because if someone is hurting you my job is to get you help. But I will only tell the person who needs to know, and I will tell you when I do." Children almost always keep going. A promise you have to break does far more damage than an honest answer.

As soon as the conversation ends, step away and write it down. Do not wait until you get home.

Writing the record

Your written record may end up read by the DSL, by social care, by the police, or in court. Write it as though it will be.

Write it the same day, as soon as you can. Memory for exact words decays within hours.
Use the child's own words in quotation marks. Do not tidy their grammar, translate slang, or soften what they said. If they used a word you would not repeat, write that word.
Separate what you saw and heard from what you think. Fact first, then a clearly marked opinion if you have one.
Include date, time, location, who was present, and who else may have heard.
Describe injuries by what you saw, position and appearance, not by what you think caused them.
Sign and date it. Do not go back and amend it later. If you remember more, add a new dated entry.

Use the Incident Report Form. If you have no form to hand, write it on anything, then transfer it and keep the original.

Safeguarding records are kept far longer than ordinary booking data, and you never destroy one, edit one after the fact, or decide something has become irrelevant. That call sits with the DSL. Never keep a safeguarding record on your own phone, in your own notes app, or in a personal email. Once written, it goes to the DSL and no copy stays with you.

Who to tell, and how fast

Immediate danger, or a child is missing near water

Ring 999. Do not ring the DSL first. Near open water there is no search-first period: if a child is unaccounted for, that is a 999 call straight away, exactly as the policy sets out.

A disclosure, an injury you are worried about, or a concern about a child

DSL, immediately. Ulvis Strokss, 07713 177685, safeguarding@schooloffish.co.uk. Record it on the Incident Report Form.

A concern about another coach, volunteer or helper

DSL, immediately, and do not discuss it with the person concerned or with other coaches. The DSL contacts the Local Authority Designated Officer. The statutory standard is within one working day, and School Of Fish works to 24 hours, whichever falls sooner. The LADO is contacted before anyone speaks to the person concerned or to the child's family, because doing it the other way round can wreck an investigation. The person will be stood down while it is looked at, which is a neutral act and not a finding against them.

If someone is removed from coaching because they have harmed a child or posed a risk of harm, School Of Fish has a legal duty under the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 to refer them to the Disclosure and Barring Service. That duty overrides confidentiality, and it applies to volunteers as well as paid staff.

The bar is lower than proven abuse. A concern goes to the DSL if someone has harmed a child or may have, may have committed an offence against a child, has behaved in a way that suggests a risk to children, or has behaved in a way that suggests they may not be suitable to work with children at all. That last one catches things nowhere near an allegation, and it is still your job to pass it on.

If you cannot reach the DSL

This will happen. He coaches, and he is not always by his phone. Your delivery unit has its own Designated Safeguarding Lead, and above them the School Of Fish Safeguarding Lead holds the standard across the organisation. Both names and numbers are given to you at induction. Where a unit has no local DSL appointed yet, the School Of Fish Safeguarding Lead is your safeguarding lead until one is. Everywhere this page says the DSL, it means your local one. Ring the School Of Fish Safeguarding Lead.

If you cannot reach either of them, do not hold the concern until you can. Use the routes below directly, and ring 999 where a child is in immediate danger. Reporting onward without reaching the DSL first is the right call in that situation, and nobody at School Of Fish will treat it as going over their head.

A concern about the DSL

Do not use the internal route. Which door depends on the concern. If you believe the lead has harmed a child or is unsuitable to work with children, that goes to the Local Authority Designated Officer for the relevant council, who holds statutory responsibility for it. If your concern is that safeguarding is not being handled properly here, that is the NSPCC Whistleblowing Advice Line on 0800 028 0285. This is written into the policy so that no concern has nowhere to go.

That line runs 8am to 8pm on weekdays and 9am to 6pm at weekends. It is not a 24-hour service, so if your concern falls outside those hours and a child is at risk, use one of the routes below rather than waiting.

If you cannot use the internal route, or it is closed

A child is in immediate danger: 999.
NSPCC Helpline: 0808 800 5000, for advice about a child. The phone line runs 10am to 4pm Monday to Friday only, though help@nspcc.org.uk is open any time.
Children's social care at the local council for the area the child lives in. Every council has an out-of-hours duty team.
Police non-emergency: 101, staffed around the clock.
Staffed at any hour: 999, 101, and the out-of-hours duty team at the child's local council. Those are the three to reach for at night or at a weekend.

Not sure whether it meets the bar? Ring the DSL and ask. That call is not a report and it costs nothing. The DSL would far rather field ten calls that come to nothing than miss the one that mattered.

The mandatory reporting duty

The law on reporting child sexual abuse is changing, and it will apply to School Of Fish coaches. The Crime and Policing Act 2026 received Royal Assent on 29 April 2026 and creates a statutory duty on anyone in regulated activity with children in England, which includes coaches and volunteers, to report child sexual abuse when they are made aware of it.

What the duty will require

You report if a child tells you they are being sexually abused, if the person doing it tells you, or if you witness it yourself.
The report goes to the police or the local authority, as soon as is reasonably practicable.
It can be delayed by up to seven days only where reporting immediately would put the child's life or safety at greater risk.
Only one report is needed per incident, so it does not have to be duplicated once it has been made.
The duty does not bite where you have only noticed possible indicators of abuse. That stays an ordinary safeguarding concern and goes to the DSL as it always has.
Deliberately stopping or discouraging someone else from reporting becomes a criminal offence in its own right.
Failing to comply can be referred to the Disclosure and Barring Service, who then assess whether you are suitable to work with children at all.

It is not in force yet. The Act is law, but the duty commences later and the Government has still to publish the detailed guidance. Until it does, keep following this page and the policy: tell the DSL immediately. When the duty commences, School Of Fish will update the policy, this guidance and coach training, and the change for you is that a disclosure of sexual abuse will carry a personal legal duty to report externally, not only an internal one.

Nothing about the duty reduces what you do now. Telling the DSL immediately has always been the standard here, and it remains the fastest route to getting a child help.

The angling-specific risks

Most safeguarding training is written for a sports hall. Ours is not. Angling puts adults and children together at the edge of deep water, often out of sight of each other, sometimes for hours, with sharp tackle and physical guidance involved. These are the situations that come up.

Physical guidance

Ask before you touch, every time, and say what you are about to do: "Can I guide your arm through the cast?" Keep contact minimal, brief and in the open. If a child says no, that is the end of it, find another way to teach it. Never guide from directly behind with your arms around a child if you can stand beside them instead.

Out of sight of the group

A tangled rig in the bushes, a toilet trip, a child who has walked off upset. Take another adult, or stay in sight of one. If that is genuinely impossible for a moment, tell another coach where you are going before you go, and keep it short.

Toilets and changing

Never accompany a child into a toilet block. Wait outside, in sight of others. If a young child needs help, a parent or carer does it, not a coach.

Weather, cold and wet

A child who is soaked, shivering or inadequately dressed for the day is both a welfare issue now and possibly a neglect indicator. Deal with the immediate problem, warmth, dry kit, ending their session early if needed, then record what you saw.

Handling fish together

Kneeling beside a child at the mat is normal coaching. Keep it open, keep the parent in view where there is one, and let the child do as much of the handling as they safely can.

Photographs

No photo of a junior without written parental consent, none on your own phone, none on your own social media, and never a photo of a child in wet or clinging clothing. If a parent asks you to take a picture on their phone, that is their photo and their choice, you are not publishing it.

Away days and competitions

The Squad fishes matches away from home water, at venues we do not control, alongside adults nobody at School Of Fish has checked. Everything on this page still applies. These are the extras.

One coach is the named lead for the whole day, from the meeting point to handing every junior back. If that is not clear before you set off, ask.
Take a register, not a headcount from memory. At the meeting point, at every move between pegs or venues, and at the end.
Our juniors stay ours. You do not hand supervision to another club's officials, however senior they look, and our juniors are not left with adults we have not checked.
A junior leaving early goes to a parent or carer only, or to someone the parent has named in writing beforehand. Not to a lift that has been offered on the day.
Report from the venue, not on the way home. A concern at an away event goes to the DSL the moment you have the junior safe, exactly as it would on our own bank.

Section 5.3 of the policy applies in full at away events: you do not take a junior in your own car. If travel arrangements are unclear before an event, that is a question for the lead coach in advance, not a decision to make in a car park.

Contact outside sessions

This is where well-meaning coaches get into difficulty, and it is the easiest area to get right because the rules are absolute.

No private messaging with a junior, on any platform. Not text, not WhatsApp, not Instagram, not Discord DM, not in-game chat.
Do not accept friend or follow requests from junior participants on personal accounts, and do not send them.
All communication goes through official School Of Fish channels or through a parent or carer.
If a junior messages you privately, do not reply beyond a short, neutral redirect, and tell the DSL immediately. Do not delete it. Screenshot it only if it is text. If it contains a nude or semi-nude image, do not screenshot, save, forward or copy it to anyone, including the DSL and the police, because making a copy is itself a criminal offence. Leave it where it is, ring the DSL straight away, and let them involve the police.
Group chats that include juniors need a second DBS-checked adult present in the chat, always.
Never give a junior a lift in your car. The only exception in the policy is a genuine emergency with another adult present, or explicit written parental consent.

Positions of trust. Under the Sexual Offences Act 2003, as amended by the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, anyone who coaches, teaches, trains, supervises or instructs a 16 or 17 year old on a regular basis in a sport is in a position of trust in law. Any sexual activity with them is a criminal offence and consent is no defence. School Of Fish goes further: no romantic or sexual relationship between anyone in a coaching or supervisory role and any learner under 18, whatever the ages involved. It is gross misconduct in every case.

When the harm comes from another child

Children can be harmed by other children, and group sessions, squads and shared transport create the opportunities for it. It counts as safeguarding and it goes down the same route.

What it looks like on the bank: one learner consistently left out or laughed at, kit or bait going missing from the same person every week, name-calling that the group has decided is a joke, a child who does not want to be put in the same group as another and will not say why, physical roughness passed off as messing about, sexual comments or touching, or anything that works like an initiation.

Never file it under banter, part of growing up, or something they should sort out themselves.
Stop the behaviour in the moment, calmly and without a public dressing-down.
Do not make the children discuss it in front of each other, and do not ask one to explain themselves in front of the group.
Record it and tell the DSL immediately, exactly as you would for any other concern.
Both children need safeguarding. The one who was harmed needs protecting; the one who caused the harm is often being harmed somewhere themselves, and is a child too.
Do not investigate, and do not decide who started it. That is the DSL's job with the full picture.

If it involves sexual behaviour, or nude or semi-nude images between juniors, treat it as serious from the first moment and ring the DSL rather than waiting for the end of the session.

Protecting yourself

Working openly protects children first. It also protects you, and that is a legitimate thing to think about.

Two adults on every session is not bureaucracy. It means there is always a witness to how you coached.
Coach in the open, in sight or hearing of others. If you would not want it seen, do not do it that way.
If something happens that could be misread, a child hugs you, a child falls in and you have to pull them out, a child says something odd to you, tell the DSL immediately and write it down the same day. An event you reported yourself is a record. The same event surfacing months later from someone else is an allegation.
If a child's behaviour towards you is inappropriate, do not manage it alone. Report it.
Keep your own conduct consistent whether or not a parent is watching.

If an allegation is ever made against you, you will be stood down while it is looked at. That is the policy working as designed, applied to everyone equally, and it is not a judgement about you.

Adults at risk

Safeguarding is not only about children. An adult learner may be at risk because of a disability, a health condition, frailty, or their circumstances. The principles are the same, with one important difference.

Tell the DSL either way. An adult's wishes decide what happens next, not whether your own safeguarding lead is told. Passing a concern to the DSL is not the same as making a formal referral, and it is what lets someone check whether the person is being pressured into saying no.
Beyond that, an adult with capacity has a say in what is done. Ask them what they want to happen, and record their wishes in their own words.
Their wishes can be overridden where someone else is at risk, particularly a child, where a serious crime has been committed, where their own life or safety is in danger, where they lack the capacity to make that decision, where asking them would itself increase the risk to them, or where the decision looks like it is being made under pressure from someone else. None of those calls are yours to make on the bank. You report, and the DSL weighs it.
If you are unsure whether someone has capacity, that is a DSL conversation, not a judgement for you to make on the bank.
Everything else, the recording, the timescale, the not-investigating, works exactly as it does for a child.

See the Adults at Risk Policy for the full position.

Situations coaches actually meet

Worked examples, with the reasoning shown. None of these are hypothetical extremes. They are the ordinary situations that come up on a coaching scheme.

A child arrives with a bruise and gives an explanation that does not fit

Do not interrogate them, and do not suggest what might have caused it. If they offer an explanation, or you ask something open like "what happened there?", write down their answer in their own words. Note what you saw, where it was, and how it looked. Report to the DSL immediately. A single unexplained bruise on an active child is usually nothing; a pattern across sessions is why we record every one.

A parent arrives to collect a child and appears drunk

Do not hand the child over into a car. Keep it calm and non-confrontational, offer to ring another contact from the booking, and ring the DSL. If they drive off with the child anyway, ring 999 immediately, not 101. A drink driver on the road with a child in the car is an emergency in progress. Give the registration, the make and colour of the car, and the direction they took. Then note the time and what you observed, not what you assumed.

Nobody collects a child at the end of the session

Two DBS-checked adults stay with the child at the meeting point. Ring the parent, then the emergency contact on the booking. After thirty minutes with no contact, the lead coach tells the DSL and considers ringing 101 for advice. You never take the child home, and you never wait alone with them.

Another coach is regularly singling out one child for attention

You do not have to be certain, and you do not raise it with them. Report it to the DSL and let the pattern be assessed by the person whose job that is. Grooming is a pattern of small things that each look innocent alone, which is exactly why individual coaches are not asked to judge it.

A child discloses something that happened at home, then says they are fine and wants to keep fishing

Let them fish. Do not make the session about it, and do not keep returning to the subject. Write it down at the first break and tell the DSL immediately. Their wanting to carry on does not lower the threshold.

A junior sends you a private message on social media

Do not delete it. Reply once and briefly to redirect them to the official channel or their parent, and tell the DSL immediately. Deleting it removes the evidence that you handled it correctly.

If the message contains a nude or semi-nude image, stop. Do not screenshot it, do not save it, do not forward it to anyone, not to the DSL, not to another coach, not to the police. Copying an indecent image of a child is a criminal offence in itself, whoever you send it to and whatever your reason. Leave the message untouched, ring the DSL immediately, and they will involve the police, who have lawful ways to retrieve it.

A learner tells you they are hurting themselves, or that they do not want to be here any more

This comes up on coaching schemes and it is not only a schools problem. It is a safeguarding concern, so it travels the same route, but the response in the moment is its own thing.

Take it seriously the first time. Do not weigh up whether they mean it, and do not tell them they have plenty to live for.
Stay calm, listen, and thank them for telling you. Shock or panic on your face closes the conversation.
Do not promise secrecy, and do not agree to keep it from their parents while you work out what to do.
Do not ask for detail about how, and do not go looking for injuries. You are not assessing risk, you are passing it to someone who can.
Do not leave them on their own if you believe they are in immediate danger. Stay with them, get another adult, and ring 999.
Ring the DSL immediately. If the learner is a child, their parent or carer is told by the DSL, not by you, unless the DSL says otherwise.
Write it down as you would any disclosure, in their words.

You are their coach, not their counsellor, and nobody expects you to fix it. Childline is free and confidential for under-19s on 0800 1111, and it is a reasonable thing to mention to a young person who wants to talk to someone. Getting the concern to the DSL is your job; getting them help is the DSL's.

You get it wrong

You ask a leading question. You promise not to tell before you realise what is coming. It happens, and it does not void the disclosure. Write down exactly what you said as well as what they said, flag it to the DSL, and let them factor it in. An honest, imperfect record is far more use than a tidy one.

Status and review

This guidance sits under the Safeguarding Children and Vulnerable Adults Policy and does not vary it. Where the two differ, the policy stands.

It is reviewed annually alongside the policy, and after any safeguarding incident, any change in the law, or any change to the DSL. Coaches are told when it changes.

Coaches: read this before your first session and at the start of each season. If anything here does not match what you have been told in training, raise it with the DSL rather than guessing.

Questions about anything on this page go to the DSL: Ulvis Strokss, 07713 177685, safeguarding@schooloffish.co.uk.