St Francis Youth Football Club was awarded the FA Charter Standard and the FA Charter Development Standard early in 2002. St Francis Youth FC was the first club in Hampshire to receive the Development Standard Charter.The FA has defined two levels of Charter, Standard and Development Standard. You can read more about the FAs charter standard here.The FA Charter is a formal framework to improve the quality of football by placing the players' needs at the heart of the club's activities. Our club has adopted this because it enables us to aim for a high standard and to verify that we are taking all possible action to achieve them.

The Charter Development Standard defines requirements for :

· A formal club constitution
· Affiliation to the local county Football Association
· Management Committee and an effective management process
· Annual General and Management meetings
· Maintenance of club accounts
· Membership procedures
· Child Protection
· Code of Conduct
· Disciplinary Procedure
· Club Development Plan

These extend to:

· Designating a club Child Protection Officer
· Formal training for officials, managers and assistants in Child Protection matters
· Vetting officials, coaches, managers and volunteers · Formal football coaching training for the coaches, managers and volunteers
· Code of conduct laying down expectations for coaches/managers, players, officials and parents/spectators
· Defining what is required for Fair Play, Equal opportunity, Respect, Behaviour and Expectations  

What does this mean for our club?

We want to provide a safe and high quality experience of playing sport and in particular football from the moment a player joins our club. The FA Charter defines what we need to do this.

To achieve this we developed the Code of Conduct, Disciplinary Procedure and the club Development Plan. We also revised our constitution to add sections to define and improve our operations. By following the requirements for the Charter we have put in place people, processes and actions to deliver the requirements set out above.

In recent years, the club has continued to grow by a further year group of players every year and in 2003 we set up 4 girls football teams. As the club has grown, the features contained in the Charter have been essential to properly plan and operate the club.

Child Protection is a major responsibility for any sport or football club. We have appointed a Child Protection Officer. We vet all coaches/managers, assistants and club officials. All managers/coaches must complete the Hampshire FA Child Protection Workshop. A key feature on which we focus is improving the coaching of players and standard of qualification of managers and coaches. The club requires and encourages each of our managers to complete the FA Level 1 Coach Course. As new parents step up to participate in training players, we pay for them to complete an appropriate football coaching course.