OK Blanka, I'm on a non-work day today, so can get my head around replying.
Hope I made it clear before that these are very personal views I'm expressing, and I respect the validity of the differing views out there. I'm also not trying to portray myself as some sort of "super-coach" judging others, because I'm most emphatically not that ....
In my profession I'm priveleged to work with people on a highly personal basis. They have to trust me to do that, and in return I undertake to respect a set of pretty strict standards.If I step outside those I can be brought to book in a big way.
In orienteering coaching I feel that, to give myself permission to work with other people's children, and for them to agree to that, I would like to sign up to something equivalent to what I do in my professional life. And I think the coaching relationship, at its best, is a two-sided contract, where both parties are developing. Clubmark tries to reflect that.
In coming to that conclusion I did a lot of reading around the events of Lyme Bay, and the public and press campaigns thereafter. I also know that I have not yet heard of a sport or an organisation in which CRB checks have not thrown up issues with some applicants that need exploring.
This meant that, even if I didn't completely like some of the wording in Clubmark, I could see where it was coming from, and I felt that having a formal structure was, like my professional rules, an extra safeguard in giving parents back their Trust in sport (and the biggest survey to date had, I understand, showed that parents cited their worries about child abuse as a reason for not encouraging their children to take up club-based sport)
Of course, nothing is foolproof. But other people I have met with similar feelings have been in professions related to mine. And some of the postings on nopesport also reflected the fact that, in the past , some juniors had ,sadly,experienced coaching which had not been helpful to their development , So orienteering certainly wasn't much different to other sports
If you already have the excellent club junior section you describe, I'm not sure there is much extra effort involved in going for Clubmark. I agree the final putting- together of the paperwork was a bit stressful, but that was mostly because the club wanted to start on a major development initiative, and things had to be completed sudenly within 7-10days( and so we could get the award at the JK.) Over the previous 18months we'd done the donkey-work though, with me working through getting qualified, and the club working up towards the 30 hours of coaching target to see how sustainable that was, and the juniors' achievmewnts being saved and documented (and Mrs H had been exploring how it would affect the club magazine content and researching the Children in Sport's units views on this)
I've been told, but don't have it documented, that some local SDUs may prefer a club to have Clubmark before they work with you on Sports Development. It would be difficult for anywhere to completely refuse, because so many sports are only part way through the process (including some real big ones like athletics) But a lot of NGBs appear to have given their clubs a deadline to finish the process, so you may find things get more difficult once the majority of other sports are through it. Certainly my local SDU saw it as an advantage. though the public-service cynic in me knows that it may only be one of a series of initiatives that are re-badged tomorrow!
A final word on it would be the bigger coaching picture, and I think there's a lot to be gained, in personal development and club development terms, in being part of the whole sports scene in the UK, rather than isolated from it. BOF have worked very hard with SCUK, and have got a lot of recognition in return, which has built up the reputation of the sport (possibly out of proportion to its size, but hey, I'm not grumbling)
This is challenging, exacting and time-consuming work for BOF officers to do, so anything that clubs can do to support BOF in this (and that includes the evidence that we run actively developing clubs that have taken the process of training juniors seriously) the better!
My major reservation is that clubs must ensure that Clubmark belongs to the Club and not to an individual. In lots of areas of orienteering, where there are hugely enthisiastic and energetic individuals, that's a real problem, and the individual must not become greater than the process, or it's doomed to fail when they move on.The award has to be maintained, not just obtained, and the Club development plans are the way to do that. I'm very hopeful that the momentum will keep it moving, but coaches should think that one through with your committee before you hand in the folder.
Too long, I know, but too tired to edit.
to Clubmark or not to Clubmark.......?
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