Who can see what at a volunteer club

There is a question worth asking out loud at the next committee meeting. Who at this club can open the children's medical forms? The question is who can, whatever the policy says. At most clubs the answer is "anyone with the link", and the link was sent to a coach who left in March, a parent who did the website for a season, and somebody's husband who helped with the tournament.

Nobody meant that to happen. It is what a shared spreadsheet does over time. Access at a volunteer club is granted in a hurry in September to get someone started, and it is never taken away because nobody's job is to take it away. Three seasons on, the club has no idea who can open what.

Who needs to see what

Stop thinking about who is trustworthy and start thinking about who needs it to do their job on a Saturday. That list is shorter than you would think.

• The manager of a squad needs the emergency contacts and medical notes for that squad. The other eleven teams are none of their business.
• The welfare officer needs to see across the club, because that is the job.
• The treasurer needs to know who has paid. They have no need to know who has asthma.
• The person doing the website needs to publish a match report and a fixture list, and needs no access to any child's details. If the only way to let them update the site is to hand over the keys to everything, the site stays out of date, because you will quite rightly never hand them over.
• Parents need to see and update their own child's record, and nobody else's.

Write that list down for your club. If your current setup cannot give people that little, it is giving them too much.

The day someone leaves

This is the part clubs get wrong most often, and it matters most. A coach steps down in March. Their access should end that day, everywhere, without anyone having to remember to do it. "We will change the password at some point" is how it carries on for three seasons.

If that sounds harsh, think about it from the other side. The coach has no wish to be the ex-volunteer who can still open forty children's medical notes. Ending access cleanly protects them as much as it protects the children.

A record of who looked

There is one more thing a club should be able to answer, and almost none can. If a parent asks who has looked at their child's details, can you tell them? A good setup keeps a record every time somebody opens a child's record, so the answer is a list. Most of the time nobody will ever ask, and the one time they do, a list is the only answer that will do.

Adults messaging children

While you are writing the list, add this line to it: no adult at the club messages a child one to one. That covers the coach, the manager and the helpful parent. Messages to a child go through the family.

Most clubs have that as a policy. The trouble with a policy is that it relies on everyone reading it and remembering it at eleven o'clock on a Friday night. It is far better if the tools you use simply cannot do it.

Three things to do this week

• List every place the children's details are held, and every person who can open each one. Include the ones who have left. It will be a longer list than you expected.
• Take back what should not be there. Change the shared passwords, remove the old names from the shared drive, and write down the date you did it.
• Make leaving a step. When a volunteer steps down, someone owns the job of ending their access that day, and it sits on the same list as collecting the kit back.