Coach training

Safeguarding Module

What to do, in the moment, when something is wrong. Then a check that you can apply it.

15 questions · every answer must be right

What this is

The School Of Fish safeguarding module for every coach, whatever their level. Read this page, then take the fifteen-question check at the bottom. Every answer has to be right, attempts are unlimited, and the explanation after each answer is part of the training. The fifteen are drawn from a larger bank, so a retake is not the same paper.

This is a School Of Fish certificated course. It is assessed, so passing it means you demonstrated you can apply this, not that you sat through it. It is not a regulated qualification and it does not carry a national level.

This module supports the Safeguarding Policy and the coach Safeguarding in Practice guidance. Where anything here and the policy differ, the policy is the authority.

Your job, and what is not your job

You notice. You listen. You write it down. You pass it on. That is the whole of your safeguarding role, and each part of it matters more than most people expect.

You are not the investigator. You never establish whether something is true. That is for people whose job it is.
You cannot promise secrecy. Not before a child speaks, not after.
You report immediately. Not at the end of the session, not once you have thought about it.
A concern you are unsure about is still a concern. Nobody at School Of Fish has 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.

What safeguarding actually means

Safeguarding is everything we do to keep children and adults at risk safe from harm. It is wider than child protection, which is the bit that kicks in when a specific child is at risk of significant harm. Safeguarding is the whole environment: how sessions are run, how coaches behave, how concerns travel, and how the water itself is managed.

It rests on a duty of care. Once a parent hands you their child for ninety minutes, you owe that child reasonable care. That duty is why the two-adult rule exists, why we brief safety before anyone casts, and why a concern goes to the safeguarding lead the same hour rather than the following week.

Poor practice, and where it becomes abuse

Most concerns you raise will not be abuse. They will be poor practice: a coach who shouts, one who lets a rule slide, one who has favourites, one who takes a photo without checking consent. Poor practice matters because it is where harm starts, and because a pattern of it is what grooming looks like from the outside.

Poor practice is behaviour that falls below the standard we set. It is dealt with as a conduct matter, and it is still reported.
Abuse is harm caused to a child, whether deliberate or through failing to act.
You are not asked to tell them apart. You report what you saw, and the safeguarding lead decides which it is. Deciding for yourself is how patterns get missed.

Everyone is capable of abusing, and abuse happens in every kind of family and every kind of club. It is not about class, income, or how respectable someone seems. That is worth holding onto, because the most common reason concerns go unreported is that the adult involved did not seem the type.

Why children often say nothing

Understanding this changes how you behave on the bank, because most of what you can do to help happens long before anybody tells you anything.

They may not know it is wrong, particularly if it has always happened.
They may have been told they will not be believed, or that something bad will happen to someone they love.
They may love the person doing it and not want them in trouble.
They may feel it is their fault, or be ashamed.
They may have told an adult before and nothing happened.
They may not have the words, particularly if they are young or communicate differently.
They may be waiting for an adult to notice and ask.

What follows for you: be the adult who is easy to talk to. Learn names. Be consistent. Notice when someone is not themselves. Never make a child raise it twice, and never leave a concern for someone else to pick up. A child who tries once and gets nothing usually does not try again.

Children with a disability are estimated to be three to four times more likely to experience abuse or neglect than children without one, and they are less likely to be believed when they do tell. On a scheme that coaches neurodivergent and disabled anglers, that is not background reading. It is the reason we take communication seriously and never treat unusual behaviour as simply misbehaviour.

What you might see

There are four recognised categories of abuse, and one pattern that runs underneath several of them.

Physical. Unexplained bruises or injuries, or explanations that do not fit what you are looking at.
Emotional. Withdrawal, fear, or a child who seems frightened of a particular person.
Sexual. Sexual language, knowledge or behaviour that does not fit the child's age, reluctance to be alone with someone, unexplained gifts or money.
Neglect. Turning up unequipped for the weather week after week, consistent hunger, poor hygiene.
Grooming. A pattern of behaviour that builds a relationship in order to abuse it. Each act looks harmless on its own, which is exactly why you report the small things and let the DSL see the pattern.

You are not diagnosing anything. You are noticing and passing on.

Indicators, in more detail

Nobody expects you to diagnose anything. These are the things that should make you say something, and most of them are ordinary until they form a pattern.

Physical

Accidental bruises land on the bony bits: shins, knees, elbows, forehead. The ones to notice are away from those, on the face, back, abdomen, upper arms, buttocks, ears, neck or hands. Any mark in the shape of a hand, a grip, teeth or an implement. Injuries in clusters, or the same kind of mark appearing week after week. An explanation that keeps changing, or one that does not fit the injury. A child who flinches from sudden movement, or who covers up in warm weather.

Emotional

Withdrawal, or the opposite. A child who cannot accept praise, is desperate for adult attention, or apologises constantly. Sudden change in a child you know. Fear of a particular person, or of going home. Behaviour much younger or much older than their age.

Sexual

Sexual knowledge, language or behaviour that does not fit their age. Reluctance to be alone with someone. Unexplained money, phones or gifts. Sudden change in how they dress or how they are around adults. Any account, however partial, that involves an adult and a child in a sexual context.

Neglect

Turning up week after week with no food, no drink, no coat, or gear that has never been replaced. Persistent hunger at the same time each session. Untreated medical or dental problems. Always the first dropped off and the last collected. Being responsible for younger siblings when they are too young to be.

One of these on one day is usually nothing. The same one every week is a pattern, and patterns are what get children helped. That is the whole reason you report the small things rather than sitting on them until you have something big.

If someone tells you something

A disclosure rarely arrives as a clear statement. It usually comes sideways, mid-session, while the learner is looking at the water rather than at you. Doing something with their hands makes it easier to say.

Do

Let them finish. Do not stop them to fetch another adult.
Keep your face calm. Shock or anger on your face stops a child mid-sentence.
Use open prompts only. "Can you tell me more about that?" or "What happened next?"
Tell them they were right to tell you, and say it clearly.
Be honest about what happens next: you are going to tell the safeguarding lead, because it is their job to help.

Never

Never promise to keep it secret.
Never ask leading questions, suggest names, or fill in gaps for them.
Never interview them, or ask them to repeat it for someone else.
Never confront the person named, and never tell a parent before the DSL says so.

The hardest moment. A learner says "promise you will not tell anyone" and waits. 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.

If the learner is neurodivergent

Words include typed, written, drawn and AAC. A disclosure does not have to be spoken. Give processing time, count five before you repeat yourself, and keep your language literal. Distress that looks like misbehaviour is communication.

Writing it down

Your record may be read by the safeguarding lead, 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 fades within hours.
Use their own words in quotation marks. Do not tidy the grammar or soften anything. If they used a word you would rather not write, write it.
Separate what you saw and heard from what you think.
Include date, time, place, who was there, and who else may have heard.
Describe any injury by what it looked like and where it was, not by what you think caused it.

Never keep a safeguarding record on your own phone, in your notes app, or in personal email. Once written it goes to the safeguarding lead and no copy stays with you. You never destroy a record, edit it afterwards, or decide it has stopped being relevant.

Who to tell, and how fast

Immediate danger, or a child missing near water

Ring 999 first. Near open water there is no search-first period. If a child is unaccounted for, that is a 999 call straight away.

Any other concern

Your local Designated Safeguarding Lead, immediately, and record it on the Incident Report Form.

If you cannot reach them

Above your local lead sits the School Of Fish Safeguarding Lead, who holds the standard across the whole organisation. If your unit has no local lead appointed yet, the School Of Fish Safeguarding Lead is your safeguarding lead until one is. Everywhere this module says the DSL or the safeguarding lead, it means your local one. Ring the School Of Fish Safeguarding Lead. If you cannot reach either, do not hold the concern. Use the external routes directly and ring 999 if a child is in immediate danger. Reporting onward without reaching the DSL first is the right call, and it is never treated as going over anyone's head.

A concern about a coach, or about the DSL

Report it, do not confront the person, and do not discuss it with other coaches. Where the concern is about the DSL, which door you use depends on the concern. If you believe they have harmed a child or are unsuitable to work with children, that is the Local Authority Designated Officer for the relevant council. If your concern is that safeguarding is not being handled properly here, that is the NSPCC Whistleblowing Advice Line on 0800 028 0285, open 8am to 8pm on weekdays and 9am to 6pm at weekends.

Outside those hours: 999 for immediate danger, 101 for police non-emergency, and children's social care at the child's local council, which runs an out-of-hours duty team. Those three are staffed at any hour. The NSPCC Helpline on 0808 800 5000 takes calls 10am to 4pm Monday to Friday only, though help@nspcc.org.uk is open any time.

The angling-specific bits

Most safeguarding training is written for a sports hall. Ours is not. Angling puts adults and children at the edge of deep water, often out of sight of each other, with sharp tackle and physical guidance involved.

Physical guidance. Ask first, every time, and say what you are about to do. Stand beside, not behind with your arms around them. If they say no, that is the end of it.
Out of sight. A tangle in the bushes, a walk to the car park. Take another adult, or tell one where you are going before you go.
Toilets. Never go in with a child. Wait outside, in sight of others. If a young child needs help, a parent does it.
Photographs. No photo of a junior without written parental consent, none on your own phone, none on your own social media.
Away days. Take a register, not a headcount from memory. Our juniors stay ours, and are not handed to another club's officials however senior they look. A junior leaving early goes to a parent or a person named in writing beforehand.

Hands on, and when it is allowed

Coaching is a hands-off job almost all of the time, and the coaching guidance covers asking before you guide a cast. There is one exception and it matters on a bank more than in a sports hall.

Preventing immediate harm is part of your duty of care. A child running toward deep water, about to step off an unstable edge, or swinging a hook toward another person is a situation where you act first and explain afterwards. Nobody at School Of Fish will criticise you for pulling a child out of the way of danger. Note that the statutory power to use reasonable force belongs to school staff, and it does not extend to a coach at a fishery. Your position rests on your duty of care and on acting reasonably to prevent harm, which is why the limits below matter.

It is a last resort. If positioning, a word, or moving someone else would have worked, use that.
Reasonable means the least contact that works, for the shortest time.
It is only ever to prevent harm. Never to punish, never to make a point, never to manage behaviour you find annoying.
Tell the safeguarding lead and write it down the same day, every time, even where everyone agrees it was obviously right.
If you find yourself needing to hold a child regularly, that is a sign the session shape is wrong, and it is a conversation to have with your lead coach.

The record is what protects both of you. An incident you reported yourself reads as a coach doing their job. The same incident described months later by somebody else reads very differently.

Missing children and collection

A child you cannot account for

Near open water there is no search-first period. The moment a junior is unaccounted for, one coach rings 999 while the others search and the remaining juniors stay supervised together. Say it is a child missing near water, because it changes the response you get. You do not wait to be sure.

Nobody arrives to collect

Two checked adults stay with the child at the meeting point. Never one, and never at anyone's home.
Ring the parent, then the emergency contact from the booking.
After thirty minutes with no contact, the lead coach tells the safeguarding lead and considers ringing 101 for advice.
You never take a child home, you never let another parent take them, and you never let them walk off alone because they say they will be fine.

The wrong person arrives

A junior goes only to a parent, a carer, or someone named in writing by them in advance. Someone turning up saying they were asked to collect is not enough, however plausible. Ring the parent and check.

Contact outside sessions

This is where well-meaning volunteers 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 a game chat.
Do not accept or send friend requests to junior participants on personal accounts.
All contact goes through official School Of Fish channels or through a parent.
Never give a junior a lift in your car.
If a junior messages you privately, reply once to redirect them, do not delete it, and tell the DSL immediately.

If a 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 it untouched, ring the DSL immediately, and they will involve the police, who have lawful ways to retrieve it. Screenshots are fine when a message is text only.

Do not view it further, and do not let anyone else view it.
Do not question the learner about the image. That is the safeguarding lead's job, not yours.
Do not discuss the incident with other coaches, with the learner's parents, or with anyone else.
Do not say or do anything that blames or shames the young person.
Do tell them you have to report it, and reassure them they will get support.
If you saw it by accident before you could stop them, say so to the safeguarding lead and ask for support. You have done nothing wrong.

Under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 as amended in 2022, anyone who coaches a 16 or 17 year old on a regular basis is in a position of trust in law. School Of Fish goes further: no romantic or sexual relationship between anyone in a coaching role and any learner under 18, whatever the ages involved.

Online, gaming and the community

School Of Fish runs an online community and a game, and juniors are in both. Online spaces carry the same duties as the bank, with three differences: there is no closing time, an adult can be anyone they say they are, and everything is copied and kept.

All contact with juniors happens in channels other adults can see. Never a private message, on any platform.
In group chats that include juniors there is always a second checked adult present.
Treat anything you see in a game chat or a community channel exactly as you would treat hearing it at the water.
Grooming online moves fast and often starts with flattery, gifts, secrecy, and moving the conversation somewhere more private. If you see an adult trying to move a junior off an open channel, report it immediately.
Livestreaming and video of sessions needs the same written parental consent as a photograph.

If a junior discloses something online rather than at the water, everything in this module still applies. Do not promise secrecy, do not question them, tell the safeguarding lead immediately, and keep the message rather than deleting it. Where the message contains an image, the image rule below applies without exception.

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 is safeguarding and it goes the same route.

Never file it under banter, horseplay, or something they should sort out themselves.
Stop the behaviour calmly, without a public dressing-down.
Do not make the children discuss it in front of each other.
Record it and tell the DSL immediately.
Both children need safeguarding. The one harmed, and the one who caused it, who is often being harmed somewhere themselves.

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.

Tell the DSL either way. An adult's wishes decide what happens next, not whether your safeguarding lead is told.
Ask them what they want to happen and record their wishes in their own words.
Their wishes can be overridden where a child or someone else is at risk, where a serious crime may have been committed, where their own safety is in danger, where they lack capacity, 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.

Self-harm and suicidal disclosure

This comes up, and it is a safeguarding concern like any other.

Take it seriously the first time. Do not weigh up whether they mean it.
Do not promise secrecy and do not agree to keep it from their parents.
It is fine to talk about it, and asking a simple clarifying question is fine. What you do not do is press for detail about how they hurt themselves, ask to see an injury, or go looking for one.
If you believe they are in immediate danger, do not leave them alone, get another adult, and ring 999.
Ring the DSL immediately. Where the learner is a child, the DSL tells the parent, not you.

You are their coach, not their counsellor, and nobody expects you to fix it. Childline is free and confidential for anyone under 19, 24 hours a day, on 0800 1111.

Other things that reach the bank

Bullying

Bullying is repeated behaviour intended to hurt, and it counts as a safeguarding matter. On a coaching scheme it usually looks like exclusion, mockery dressed as banter, kit going missing from the same person, or one learner never being picked. Online it follows them home, which is what makes it different from a falling out. Report it.

Exploitation

Children can be groomed for criminal purposes as well as sexual ones, including being used to move drugs or money. Signs include unexplained cash or an expensive new phone, a much older friend nobody has met, going missing, or becoming secretive and defensive about where they have been. You are not investigating. You are noticing and reporting.

What is happening at home

A child living with domestic abuse is being harmed even if nobody has touched them. You may see it as jumpiness, exhaustion, reluctance to go home at the end of a session, or a parent who behaves in a way that worries you. It is the same route: report it to the safeguarding lead.

None of these need you to be certain. They need you to say something.

What happens after you report

Coaches stop reporting when reporting feels like shouting into a cupboard, so this is what actually happens to what you pass on.

The safeguarding lead records it and decides what it means alongside anything else already known, which is usually more than you can see.
They may seek advice from children's social care, the NSPCC, the local authority designated officer, or the police.
They decide who needs to know, which is normally very few people. That is not secrecy for its own sake, it is protecting the child and not wrecking an investigation.
They decide whether and when a parent is told. That decision is never yours, because in some cases telling a parent puts a child in more danger.

You will often not be told the outcome, and that is not a slight. Information is shared on a need-to-know basis, and needing to know is about protecting the child rather than about having been the one who raised it. What you are entitled to is confirmation that it was received and acted on. If you do not get that, ask.

Confidentiality

Safeguarding information is shared only with people who need it to keep someone safe. You do not discuss a concern with other coaches, with parents, with the child's friends, or at the pub. Getting this wrong can identify a child, tip off an abuser, and destroy the trust that made them speak in the first place.

Sharing information properly

Coaches sometimes say nothing because they think data protection stops them. It does not, and the national guidance says so outright: data protection law is not a barrier to sharing information to protect a child. Fear of breaching confidentiality is never a reason to delay.

You do not need consent to share a safeguarding concern when a child is at risk of harm.
Be open where you safely can. Tell the child, and the family, what you are sharing and why, unless doing so would put the child at greater risk. If a parent may be the risk, you say nothing to them.
Share only what is needed, with only the people who need it, and only for the purpose of keeping someone safe.
Share it accurately, separating what you saw from what you think, and share it promptly.
Keep it secure. Not on your own phone, not in a personal email, not in a group chat.
If in doubt, ask the safeguarding lead, and you can do that without naming the child.

The short version: you are not the one deciding who else finds out. You pass it to the safeguarding lead, who decides. What you must never do is decide by yourself that it is not worth passing on.

If you think nothing happened

This is the one people never get told, and it is where safeguarding fails quietly. You report something, weeks pass, and nothing visible changes. You start to wonder whether it was taken seriously. Then next time, you do not bother.

Ask. You are entitled to confirmation that your concern was received and acted on, even where you cannot be told what was decided.
If you are still worried, say so again, in writing. A second report is not a nuisance. Serious case reviews are full of people who raised something once.
If you believe a child is still at risk and you are not satisfied with the response, you go outside. Children's social care for the area the child lives in, the NSPCC Helpline on 0808 800 5000, or the police. You do not need anyone's permission.
Nobody at School Of Fish will hold that against you. Going outside because you believed a child was at risk is the system working, not disloyalty.

Disagreeing with a decision is different from a concern about the safeguarding lead. If your concern is about the lead themselves, go external: the Local Authority Designated Officer where you believe they have harmed a child or are unsuitable to work with children, or the NSPCC Whistleblowing Advice Line on 0800 028 0285 where safeguarding is not being handled properly here.

Protecting yourself

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

Two adults at every session means there is always a witness to how you coached.
Coach 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 pull them out, 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 an allegation is ever made against you, you will be stood down while it is looked at. That is the policy applied to everyone equally, and it is not a judgement about you.

Your own responsibilities

Some of what keeps children safe is about you rather than about them.

Your DBS is not a formality. It exists because most people who harm children look exactly like people who do not.
Tell School Of Fish if your circumstances change. Any caution, conviction, charge, or investigation by an employer or a statutory agency, including anything that happens outside angling. That is a condition of coaching here, not a courtesy.
Keep your training current. Safeguarding training is refreshed on a three-year cycle. A lapsed check means you do not coach until it is back in place.
Know who your local safeguarding lead and the School Of Fish Safeguarding Lead are, and have both numbers in your phone before you need them.
Read the policy. This module supports it, it does not replace it.

If an allegation is made about you

You will be stood down while it is looked at. That is the policy applied to everyone equally and it is not a finding. You will be told what the concern is as far as that is possible without prejudicing an investigation, and you should get your own support, from a union, a friend, or the NSPCC. Do not contact the person who raised it, do not contact the child or their family, and do not discuss it with other coaches. Every one of those makes it worse for you.

Transport, and consent

Transport

You never take a junior in your own car. The only exception in the policy is a genuine emergency with another adult present, or explicit written parental consent.
That applies to a lift home, a lift to a peg, and a lift to an away match.
If travel is arranged for an event, it is arranged in advance, in writing, by parents or by a group arrangement, and never settled in a car park on the day.
If you find yourself alone with a junior in a vehicle for any reason, tell the safeguarding lead and record it the same day.

Consent, and older juniors

Parental consent is required for a junior to take part, for photographs, and for events. A sixteen or seventeen year old has more say in decisions about themselves than a younger child, and the law recognises that, but it does not make them an adult in your care and it does not reduce your duties toward them by any amount.

It also does not change the position of trust rule. If anything it sharpens it, because that is exactly the age group the law was changed to protect.

Safer working practice, in one list

If you remember only one page of this module, make it this one.

Two adults at every session. Never coach alone.
Work in sight or hearing of others.
Ask before any physical contact, keep it brief, keep it in the open.
Physical intervention is a last resort, only ever to prevent harm, never for behaviour, and always recorded.
Never a private message to a junior on any platform.
Never a lift in your car. The two exceptions in the policy are arranged in advance and in writing, never decided on the day.
Never into a toilet block with a child.
No photographs without written parental consent, never on your own phone.
Never promise secrecy.
Never investigate, never interview, never confront.
Report immediately, record the same day, in their words.
Never keep a safeguarding record on your own device.
Never discuss a concern with anyone but the safeguarding lead. The only exceptions are the external routes in this module, used where you cannot reach either safeguarding lead, or where you have reported and still believe a child is at risk.
If something could be misread, report it yourself before anyone else does.
If you are unsure, ring the safeguarding lead. It costs nothing.

What is coming

The Crime and Policing Act 2026 received Royal Assent on 29 April 2026 and creates a duty on people in regulated activity with children, which includes you, to report child sexual abuse to the police or the local authority when they are made aware of it.

It is not in force yet, and the Government has still to publish the guidance. Until it commences, you follow this module and the policy: tell the DSL immediately. When it commences, School Of Fish will update the policy, the guidance and this module, and tell every coach.

The change for you will be that a disclosure of sexual abuse carries a personal legal duty to report externally, not only an internal one.

Stuck on something?

Talk to your coach. They're the right person to walk you through it.

info@schooloffish.co.uk