Children’s Coaching Collaborative

The Children’s Coaching Collaborative (CCC) is a collective of like-minded organisations with a common purpose and desire to effect change for the better together. Recognising the role coaches play in enabling children’s enjoyment of physical activity, the CCC wants to create a nation of “child-first” coaches.

Child-first coaching is a science-backed playbook of techniques to support coaches in sustaining child participation by increasing their sense of fun, freedom and belonging.

Our challenge is to get more of the 2.1m coaches working with children across the country to shift from being COACH DOWN (controlled, one-size-fits-all, coach-led) to CHILD UP (responsive, inclusive, co-creators). By this, we mean to encourage coaches to collaborate with young people on sessions and goals and to centre the child’s voice in their practice. In doing so, we believe they will develop a genuine and lifelong love for being active.

When we play their way, every child wins.

By showing coaches the potential that they can unlock when they see the world of activity through the eyes of the child, the CCC is aiming to encourage them to collaborate with children and young people to build sessions based on fun, freedom and belonging, with the confidence that they aren’t compromising on safety or skills.

45% of children don't enjoy participating in sport / physical activity

Sport England’s Active Lives survey showed that 55% of children don’t exercise enough. This isn’t that surprising when only 45% of children strongly agree that they enjoy participating in sport / physical activity. This is disproportionately the case for marginalised groups.