How Teamo Helps Cricket Clubs Meet Safeguarding Requirements

With the cricket season just a few months away, January is when club committees turn their attention to the admin that keeps everything running smoothly. Membership renewals, fixture planning, kit orders – and crucially, safeguarding.

If your club has a junior section, or fields under-18 players in open age cricket, you'll know that safeguarding isn't optional. The ECB's Safe Hands Policy sets out clear requirements that all affiliated clubs must meet. Getting this right protects young players, gives parents confidence, and shields your volunteers from unnecessary risk.

But let's be honest – managing safeguarding with spreadsheets, paper registers and WhatsApp groups creates gaps. Important information gets lost. Communication happens outside monitored channels. And when something goes wrong, piecing together what happened becomes difficult.

This is where Teamo can help. We've built safeguarding considerations into the core of how our platform works, so clubs can meet their responsibilities without drowning in admin.

Before diving into features, it's worth understanding what the ECB's Safe Hands Policy actually requires. Every club with juniors must:

• Have a trained and vetted Club Safeguarding Officer
• Ensure adults working with children have current DBS checks
• Follow safer recruitment practices
• Have procedures for managing children during sessions and away fixtures
• Maintain appropriate supervision ratios
• Know how to respond to and report concerns

The ECB provides extensive guidance through their Safeguarding Kit Bag, including templates for consent forms, transport policies, and missing children procedures. But having policies on paper is one thing – implementing them consistently is another.

Child-Safe Communication

One of the biggest safeguarding risks in grassroots sport is unmonitored communication between adults and children. The ECB's guidance on social media and online communication is clear: adults should not be having private conversations with juniors.

In Teamo, parents and guardians are automatically copied into all communications with under-18 members. This isn't a setting that coaches need to remember to enable – it's how the system works by default.

Additionally, contact details for juniors are not visible to other members. If a coach needs to contact a young player, it goes through the app with the parent copied in.

All messages within Teamo are permanently retained, creating a complete audit trail. If a concern is ever raised, your Club Safeguarding Officer can review the full communication history rather than trying to piece together screenshots from various phones.

Paper registers have served cricket clubs for decades, but they have obvious limitations. They blow away. They get left in the pavilion. They're not accessible weeks later when you need to check who was at a particular session.

Teamo's digital attendance register lets coaches mark off who's present at training and matches directly from their phone. The data is timestamped, stored securely, and accessible to authorised club administrators.

More importantly for safeguarding, our sign-out register allows coaches to record which parent or guardian collected each Junior at the end of the session. This directly addresses the ECB's guidance on "Managing Child Away from the Club" and creates a clear audit trail of handovers.

Picture this: you're at an away fixture, a junior takes a blow to the head, and you need to contact their parent immediately. Where's the emergency contact form? Back at the clubhouse, probably.

With Teamo, emergency contact details and medical information are accessible pitchside through the app. Team managers travelling to away matches have the information they need without relying on paper forms that may or may not have made it into the kit bag.

This includes allergies, medical conditions, and any other information parents have provided during registration – all in one place, all immediately accessible to the right people.

The ECB requires written parental consent for various activities, particularly for juniors playing in open age cricket. There are also consents needed for photography, transport arrangements, and medical treatment.

Teamo's registration system allows clubs to collect all necessary consents digitally as part of the sign-up process. No chasing paper forms. No wondering whether you actually have permission to post that team photo. Everything is captured, stored, and accessible when needed.

Junior members don't exist in isolation – they're connected to parents and guardians who need appropriate visibility of what's happening at the club.

Teamo's family linking ensures that parents can see their children's fixtures, availability requests, team selections and club communications. They're not relying on their 12-year-old to pass on messages about schedule changes.

This also means parents can manage availability on behalf of younger children, respond to team selections, and stay informed about club activities – all through the same app.

Not everyone at your club needs access to everything. Your treasurer doesn't need to see medical information. Your groundsperson doesn't need access to junior communications.

Teamo uses role-based permissions so clubs can control who sees what. Safeguarding-sensitive information is restricted to those who need it, while general club communications flow freely to all members.

Your Club Safeguarding Officer can be given specific access to monitor flagged content and review communications if concerns are raised – without needing to be copied into every message.

Tools and systems are important, but they're only part of the picture. Effective safeguarding comes from creating a culture where:

• Everyone knows who the Club Safeguarding Officer is and how to contact them
• Concerns are taken seriously and reported appropriately
• Policies are understood, not just filed away
• Young people feel safe and valued

Teamo helps with the practical implementation, but the culture comes from your volunteers, your committee, and your commitment to getting this right.

If you're not sure where to start with safeguarding at your club, your County Cricket Board will have a County Safeguarding Officer who can provide guidance, training and support. The ECB's Safe Hands courses are available for Club Safeguarding Officers and anyone working with juniors.

If your club is reviewing its systems ahead of the 2026 season, here's a quick checklist:

• Club Safeguarding Officer appointed and trained
• DBS checks are current for all regulated roles
• Safeguarding policy adopted and communicated
• Codes of conduct are in place for players, parents, and volunteers
• Consent forms collected for juniors in open-age cricket

• Digital attendance register in use
• Sign-out procedures for junior sessions
• Emergency contacts accessible at away fixtures
• Communication channels that include parents automatically
• Clear reporting process if concerns arise

We know that choosing a club management platform is a significant decision, and safeguarding is just one part of what Teamo offers. From fixture management to online payments, team selection to membership renewals, we help cricket clubs reduce admin and keep volunteers sane.

If you'd like to see how Teamo handles safeguarding – and everything else – book a demo with our team.

Book a Demo

Or if you prefer to explore at your own pace, you can sign up for a free account and see the basics for yourself.

Questions? Drop us an email at support@teamo.chat – we're always happy to help.

Teamo is trusted by over 200 cricket clubs across the UK to manage their members, teams and payments. We're passionate about making grassroots sport easier to run, so volunteers can focus on what matters – getting people playing.