Get ready for the new season: your safeguarding checklist
As clubs, schools and universities prepare for the new lacrosse season, now is the time to make sure your safeguarding arrangements, people and records are ready.
Safeguarding is central to creating a safe, positive and inclusive environment for every player, coach, official, volunteer, parent, carer and spectator.
Completing a few important checks before your first training session, fixture or event will help your club or school begin the season safely and with confidence.
Your pre-season safeguarding checklist
Confirm your Welfare Lead
Make sure your Club or School Welfare Lead’s name and contact details are correct, clearly displayed and easy for participants, parents and carers to find.
Everyone involved in your organisation should know who they can speak to if they have a concern.
Review coaching and volunteer roles
Confirm that coaches and relevant volunteers hold the qualifications, safeguarding training and role-specific checks required by England Lacrosse and your organisation.
This is also a good opportunity to review whether responsibilities are clearly defined and whether any new members of staff or volunteers require additional support.
Check your DBS arrangements
Make sure everyone whose role requires a DBS check has the correct level and type of check.
DBS certificates do not have a formal expiry date. Your organisation should follow England Lacrosse requirements and its own safer-recruitment procedures to determine when a new check or status check is required.
Where applicable, organisations can use the DBS Update Service—with the individual’s consent—to check the current status of an eligible Standard or Enhanced DBS certificate.
DBS rules are changing from 1 September 2026
From 1 September 2026, the legal definition of regulated activity with children will change.
The current supervision exemption will be removed for volunteers who teach, train, instruct, care for or supervise children. This means that supervision by a qualified coach will no longer prevent these duties from being regulated activity when the volunteer carries them out:
On more than three days in any 30-day period; or
Overnight between 2am and 6am, with the opportunity for face-to-face contact with children.
Where these conditions are met, a volunteer aged 16 or over will be undertaking regulated activity and will be eligible for an Enhanced DBS check with Children’s Barred List information.
The change may particularly affect volunteer assistant coaches, trainee coaches, student coaches, junior leaders aged 16 or 17 and other volunteers who regularly help deliver junior lacrosse activity.
Clubs, schools and universities should begin reviewing these roles now and allow sufficient time for any required checks to be completed.
Read our full guidance on the DBS changes from September 2026
Check safeguarding training
Confirm that safeguarding training remains current for coaches, welfare personnel and relevant volunteers.
Review your policies and procedures
Check that your safeguarding policies, codes of conduct and reporting arrangements are current, accessible and understood.
Policies are most effective when people know where to find them and understand what they are expected to do.
Make reporting routes visible
Players, parents, carers, staff and volunteers should know how to raise a concern and who they can speak to.
Display the details of your Welfare Lead prominently at your venue and make them easy to find on your website or other digital channels.
Review your online communication
Safeguarding responsibilities apply online as well as in person.
Digital platforms are an important part of organising activity and communicating with participants, but they must be used carefully and consistently.
Before the new season:
Review which social media accounts, messaging apps and digital platforms your organisation uses.
Use approved organisational or group communication channels wherever possible.
Maintain appropriate professional boundaries.
Avoid unnecessary private one-to-one communication with young people.
Involve parents or carers in communications with junior participants where required by your policy.
Check who has administrator access to organisational accounts and remove access that is no longer needed.
Protect personal information and follow your organisation’s data-protection procedures.
Make sure staff and volunteers know how to record and report an online safeguarding concern.
Clear communication arrangements can help protect participants, staff and volunteers while supporting a positive digital culture.
Reporting a safeguarding concern
If you are concerned about someone’s welfare or about practices within a club, school or association, report the concern to the appropriate Welfare Lead or England Lacrosse.
You do not need to decide whether abuse has taken place. Your responsibility is to share the concern through the appropriate reporting route.
If someone is in immediate danger, call 999.
Concerns can be reported to England Lacrosse by emailing [email protected]
visiting our Report a Concern page
Further safeguarding support
Additional guidance and resources are available through:
England Lacrosse Safe Sport hub
England Lacrosse coaching information
Safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility. By completing these checks and making expectations clear before activity begins, we can work together to ensure lacrosse remains safe, welcoming and inclusive for all.