A Guide to Developing UK Coaching Framework Sports Coaching Delivery Plans
Contents The benefits of a sports coaching delivery plan 2 Developing a sports coaching delivery plan 2 Who can help develop the plan? 2 Using the UK Coaching Framework 3 and sports coach UK to help you with your plan Coaching Delivery Plans: The components 3 Your current position 4 Current Capacity and Financial position 4 Vision and results 5 Planning: setting goals and targets 5 Financial planning 8 Planning the process of developments 8 Risks and dependencies 9 Ensuring Inclusion 9 Monitoring your plan 10 Helpful hints 10 1
The Benefits of a Sports Coaching Delivery Plan Planning is about spelling out the guide to your sport s future. A delivery plan: helps you to know where your sport is now and how coaching fits into the wider structures of your sport makes you write down what you want your coaches and coaching system to look like in the future helps you address issues of access and under-representation leading to development of a cohesive, ethical, inclusive and valued coaching system. makes you compare yourself to other sports to see what you can learn helps you to maximise resources helps you to realize potential partnership working makes you map out an effective route with set targets to help you reach your vision. helps you to sell your sport coaching to different interest groups helps you communicate what is planned to others. Question: What other benefits could a Coaching delivery plan offer your sport? Developing a Sports Coaching Delivery plan There are no hard and fast rules associated with how you prepare and write your plan. Your delivery plan is very similar to a business plan in principle. Successful business plans are tailored to the needs of the audience and industry. Most people do not want to read a wordy plan. Keep to the point and make sure all the important information is included and is easy to follow. Questions: Who is the audience/s for your delivery plan? How do they like to receive information? Can you cut down the length of the plan and still keep the key messages? Who can help develop the Plan? Whom you involve will depend on how much time you have to prepare and write the plan. If you are time-starved, you may use a small cross-section of your sport with the expertise to write your plan, and then work out a strategy to engage others at a later date. If you have time, a more comprehensive consultation process would be useful. People in your sport will feel they have ownership of the plan; it is more likely to be implemented if people are consulted along the way. A staged approach to writing the plan, interspersed with consultation, will allow this to happen. Allowing ONE person to dominate the plan can cause problems later. 2
Questions: Who is developing your plan? How do you make sure the whole sport buys into the coaching delivery plan? Using the UK Coaching Framework and sports coach UK to help you with your plan The UK Coaching Framework was launched in April 2008 with a vision to create: A cohesive, ethical, inclusive and valued coaching system where: Skilled coaches support children, players and athletes at all stages of their development in sport And which is number one in the world by 2016 The UK Coaching Framework provides the blueprint for developing a system to take coaching in the UK towards being the best in the world by 2016. It includes a 3/7/11 year action plan. For more information on the UK Coaching Framework please visit www.sportscoachuk.org. The work that is being developed to support the 3/7/11/ year action plan is ongoing. Present and future UK Coaching Framework documentation can act as a guide to help you to design your implementation plans for the future. The Toolkits and Userguides page of the sports coach UK website explains; The stage of development of each action area and what current documentation is available What toolkits, templates and case studies are available to help you. Ongoing developments related to the Building the Foundations and Delivering the Goals phases of the UK Coaching Framework Coaching Delivery Plans: The components Sports Coaching Delivery Plans should outline how a sport is going to develop and implement a coaching system to meet the needs of the sport. It should be linked to the sport s over-arching strategic goals. The content of Coaching Delivery Plans should therefore focus on the development of a coaching system and the necessary steps to achieve this. The following headings can be used to provide guidance on the content of coaching delivery plans. 3
Your Current Position Questions: Where is your sport now? What does your sport s coaching environment look like at the moment? How does the coaching environment of the sport influence the other sport environment s and visa versa? How does it measure against the 12 specific actions in the UK Coaching Framework document? Question: What are the benefits of developing and implementing a coaching system? To the Sport To the Participant To the Coach Areas to Consider When Examining Current Position: participant pathways coach pathways front-line coaching support for coaches coaching as a professionally regulated vocation research and development Top Tip: Don t worry if you have not had time to research all the areas that will allow you to write a meaningful summary. Just build further analysis of the weaker areas in to your action plan for the foundation stage and summarise what you do know now. Current Capacity and Financial position Your sport is dependent on a variety of funders to help finance your plan. By aligning your coaching vision and objectives to the UK Coaching Framework vision, you will meet the needs of the different funders e.g. Sport England, Sport Scotland, Sports Council for Wales and UK Sport. What resources does the sport have available to help with the work that needs doing? Don t forget to include shared partnership arrangements and both the 4
national and the regional sport and coaching structures that already exist. Examples of areas to think about include: Development team, teams of experts. Products and services that the sport already has Current operational processes Links with other sports and other organisations Links other departments in your sport A summary of the existing capacity to manage and support the development of coaching within the sport can be developed when you have reviewed the above areas. Top Tip: Your resources are wider than your immediate department and sport; make sure that you utilise all the possibilities. Questions: What funding streams currently exist in your sport? What is available to you from other sources? How does this plan help you capitalise on these investments? What other resources are the sport willing to commit to develop and manage the sports coaching delivery plan? Vision and Results The Vision A vision provides a clear image of how you d like the future to be for your sport. Areas to Consider When Examining your Vision: What does a world leading system for your sport look like by 2016? What does a world leading coaching system for your sport look like by 2016? Do they work together? Development of a headline vision for the sport s coaching delivery plan to support the over-arching strategic goals for the sport will inspire your sport and drives the rest of your plan. You have already signed up to the overall vision for coaching in the UK, but how can you make sure that your sport s vision echoes the message and is meaningful to your sport? 5
Questions: What are the elements of your coaching system? What will they look like in 2016? How can you best describe the picture of this coaching system to others? Your Coaching System Manager will have examples of how other sports have written their visions to give you ideas. The Results Results refer to the end product and are expressed in two ways quantity how many? quality how good is it? In this instance your results refer to your athletes and coaches development and performance. You are designing a coaching system to make it easier for athletes and coaches to develop and perform. What are the outcomes that will be achieved by delivering the vision? Increase the Quality of Coaches Increase Quantity of Coaches Increased Participation Improved Performance Using your knowledge on the current position - and knowing what you want to achieve - will allow you to set goals and targets to achieve your result. Top Tip: Workforce Developments Plans will describe the quantity and quality of coaches needed LTCD and LTPD models will describe the quality of your coaches and athletes Planning: Setting goals and targets As you are already aware, the planning process is an outline of how you are going to achieve your results. It involves: setting goals and targets you can measure writing an action plan that includes high level tasks and milestones developing an operational plan that details the things that need to be done in order to achieve these tasks 6
The UK Coaching Framework documentation outlines proposed target and milestones over 3/7/11 years. These act as a guide for you to develop your goals and targets short term (Whole-Sport Plan) and medium to long term (UK Coaching Delivery Plan) It is important to set goals in all areas of the development process. Areas to Consider When Setting Goals and Targets: what do you need to audit and plan to plan? what to you need to plan to deliver? what do you need to plan to review? For example: What needs to be developed and delivered first? o Participant Models o Coach Models o Workforce Auditing Who is going to be involved in the development of these tasks and what process are you going to use to develop them? What needs to be planed and audited in the following areas? o long-term participant development o long-term coach development o front-line coaching o support for coaches o coaching as a professionally regulated vocation o research and development Top Tip: At a high level there are two areas to concentrate on: Planning the development of the coaching system Planning operational delivery. (business as usual) The table below identifies the recommended elements of planning that need to be identified within sports coaching delivery plans at both system building and operational delivery. Coaching System Participant Pathways Operational UK Coaching Certificate (Qualifications/CPD/Tutor Development) 7
Coach Pathways Workforce Auditing System Building/Coaching Plan Research Front Line Coaching Programmes Sport Specific Coaching Programmes Identification of the proposed Delivery Chain for coaching within the sport Integration or regional/sub regional delivery system/partners Identification of potential synergies and efficiencies through working with other Governing Bodies and the complementary support agencies Top Tip: Do I really need to carry on with the ALL the planned business as usual work? Is it useful long term or can it be shelved? Financial Planning Financial planning is the identification of the investment requirements in coaching and the proposed investment streams e.g. Funding for a officer to develop coaching system Funding for consultation groups etc. Top Tip: Be realistic and honest with your funding needs. Make sure you can back up the financial analysis you produce. Question: What does your sport need financially to fulfil your vision? Planning the process of developments This is an area that can sometimes be neglected. There are different ways to achieve the end result. Working out ways that suit your sport and the resources you have will save time later. It is important to identify the steps needed to develop a full Coaching Delivery Plan for the sport, aligned to the UK Coaching Framework 8
Top Tip: Understanding your process options allows you to make contingency plans and helps the review process as well. Risks and Dependencies What are the risks/dependencies/assumptions in delivering the plan? For example: Dependencies linked to what needs to be developed first i.e. the need to develop your participant model and coach model and undertake a coaching workforce audit before developing interventions on recruiting, developing coaches etc. What are your plans dependant on? e.g. If the development of another department s/partner s work informs one of your developments, have you got a contingency plan if this is not ready? What else could you still do to stay on track? What assumptions have you made when planning? How risky are these assumptions? What contingency measures have you put in place to combat these? How much time and resources do you spend on building a world class system for the future and how much time and resources do you spend on delivering business as usual. Question: How are risks identified, assessed and managed? Top Tip: Creating a SWOT analysis of your plan can be a helpful exercise. Ensuring Inclusion Throughout the planning process, remember to consider how the sport ensures inclusion of minority groups. The following set of questions makes specific reference to disabled people, but the majority of questions could be modified to test policies of inclusion based on gender, race etc: Questions: Does the Introduction to the Plan reflect participation experiences/ interests of disabled people within the sport? Is the Vision inclusive? Where Values and Principles are included, do they include disabled people? Do the Strategic Objectives or Priorities include provision for disabled people? Are the disability sport performance and participation pathways 9
for the sport represented within the document? Is there information about how the sport will be equitable in its Operational Planning? Where specific statements are made about equity, equality, or inclusion, are they relevant and appropriate to disabled people? Does the Plan include specific information about how equity, equality, or inclusion will be established or maintained? Where partnership working is referred to, are any of the Home Nation Disability Sport Organisations (HNDSOs), National Disability Sport Organisations (NDSOs), or others cited? Is Paralympic success identified alongside Olympic success? Do the Key Performance Indicators apply to, and/or include disabled people? Where Aims, Objectives and Outcomes are identified, are the Aims inclusive of disabled people and do the Objectives and Outcomes specifically relate to disabled participants (interests and performances), coaches, relevant organisations, etc? Monitoring your Plan Keeping a record of the lessons learnt in developing and delivering your plans will be invaluable to you when you review your plan. So add time in to your implementation plans for periodic reviews. Helpful Hints Finally, these considerations may be useful in the establishment of your coaching plan: Implications of the UK Coaching Framework on the sport s overall system, not just in coaching The sport s capacity to work on the development of the plan/system Ambition and willingness to change sport Building a coaching system for your sport that will deliver outcomes for both coaches and participants The need to be very clear on purpose of plan You are establishing the Bible for coaching within your sport/industry Importance of buy-in on the philosophy of Player/Coach centred and what this means Planning the Plan, not going into delivery too early UK Coaching Framework provides the planning tool and reference point Getting the balance between Development of Plan and system v operational delivery Addressing under representation is central to creating an ethical, inclusive coaching system. As a sport you can take the UK Coaching Framework as far as you want to take it you can do small tweaks to present your system or you can revolutionise the way you develop and deliver your sport using coaching as the catalyst for change Spencer Moore, British Swimming 0