Tournaments, travel and overnight stays: organising a safe trip with young people

By Géraldine Heinen28 August 20267 min read

Away matches and tournaments must be safe and enjoyable activities for young people. A trip with an overnight stay is often one of the best memories of a season, and also one of the moments when the club is most exposed: new places, shared rooms, free time, tiredness. This guide helps clubs implement adequate prevention measures and makes the planning and organisation of trips easier. Most of these preparations can be done at the start of the season, when the various events are scheduled. It complements our 5-step toolkit, whose "planning of travel and tournaments" guidelines it details.

1. At the start of the season: set the framework with parents and young people

Organise a meeting with parents or guardians at the start of the season to explain your child protection policy and the measures that follow from it, introduce your coaching staff and go through the code of conduct (Word template to download). It is also the ideal opportunity to discuss travel arrangements for away matches and tournaments and to have parents or guardians sign the necessary parental authorisations.

Organise a meeting with the children for the same reasons. A young person who has heard the rules, who knows the supervisors and who knows who to turn to experiences the trip with much greater peace of mind.

↑ Back to contents

2. Before leaving: the checklist

Five points not to forget:

• Parental authorisations: make sure they are signed and kept in a safe place. An authorisation includes at a minimum the child's identity, the dates and place of the trip, the emergency contact details of the parents or guardians and their explicit agreement.
• At least one adult of the same sex as the children is present when working with groups of children (and one adult of each sex for mixed groups).
• Adequate insurance covers the trip, transport and accommodation.
• Everyone travelling has signed the code of conduct, adults and under-18s alike.
• The children know who to contact in case of a problem.

And four essential organisational elements:

• Prepare a programme with the dates and times of departure and return.
• Organise a meeting with parents or guardians and the children, present the programme of the trip to them, then answer their questions.
• Identify a club member who is not travelling as a point of contact. They have a list of everyone taking part in the trip with their contact details.
• Make clear who the person responsible for safeguarding on the trip is, make sure they are fit to fulfil this role, and that everyone in the group knows who they are and what their role is.

↑ Back to contents

3. The rules of the trip and room allocation

Before leaving, set the rules of the trip with the children and explain the sanctions in case of non-compliance. The young people sign the children's code of conduct.

Decide on room allocation before leaving, and make sure the supervisors' rooms are well distributed (supervision ratios and changing room rules: Word template to download). For example, if the group is spread over three floors, there must be at least one adult's room per floor. Ideally, the whole group is on the same floor. Over-18s never sleep in the same room as under-18s. This rule also applies to the young adults in the group and to volunteer chaperones, including parents.

↑ Back to contents

4. On arrival

• Make sure no one has access to alcohol or drugs in the rooms or at any other time.
• Make sure the films on offer are appropriate and that adult channels are not available in the children's rooms.
• Make sure everyone knows where the emergency exits are and knows the emergency procedures.
• Organise a group meeting to present the programme and the rules. Make sure the children always have their identity document on them.

↑ Back to contents

5. During the trip and on return

During the trip, organise a short group meeting and a supervisors' meeting every day. They do not need to last long: they are simply an opportunity to discuss potential problems and resolve them before they grow.

On your return, ask the children and the supervisors what they liked and what they would like to change. This feedback will help you prepare for the following year, and it feeds directly into your club's monitoring and evaluation process.

↑ Back to contents

6. The responsibilities of supervisors on a trip

The staff and volunteers accompanying a trip ensure the safety and well-being of the children. In practice, they:

• carry out a risk assessment before the trip, in particular regarding transport and accommodation;
• arrive at the departure point well before the children, so that the children never wait alone;
• decide on a general meeting point before boarding the means of transport (bus, plane, train);
• make sure the children have the name and contact details of the safeguarding lead or the authorised chaperones travelling with them;
• familiarise the group with the emergency exits and set a meeting place in case of fire, including at the venue where the matches take place;
• if a child has to stay at the hotel because they are injured or ill, arrange for two supervisors to stay and look after them;
• if a child falls ill or is seriously injured and has to stay on site once the tournament is over, ideally two of them stay with the child; supervisors have a duty to make sure the child gets home safely;
• when free time is given, make sure supervisors and young people do visits or leisure activities together;
• make sure all the young people take part in group outings, so that no child is left alone at the accommodation, and plan a meeting point in case one of them gets separated from the group;
• have access to a mobile phone and remain reachable 24 hours a day; they have a complete list of the names and contact details of parents and guardians, and vice versa, in case of emergency;
• have put in place a missing child policy that everyone is aware of.

↑ Back to contents

7. The missing child policy

It is the scenario nobody wants to experience, and that is precisely why it must be written down before departure. A missing child policy describes, on one page, what everyone does as soon as a young person is missing: who checks the obvious places (room, toilets, meeting point) and for how long, who takes charge of the rest of the group so that it remains supervised, who informs the club's point of contact back home, when and by whom the parents are informed, and from what point the local police or emergency services are contacted. It includes the meeting points set on arrival and the list of contact details. Every supervisor has read it before departure, and the young people know what to do if they find themselves separated from the group: stay where they are, go to the meeting point or call the number they have on them.

A club that has prepared all this has not made its trips more burdensome: it has made them calmer, for the young people, for the parents and for the supervisors. To check where your club stands on this point and on the other situations at risk, our free self-assessment devotes part of its "support and resources" section to it.

↑ Back to contents