# Safeguarding — LEKKIN > How LEKKIN protects young players: messages go to guardians, nobody can message a child privately, people see only what their role needs, and your club stays in charge. # Keeping young players safe. Most of the people on a grassroots club’s books are children. LEKKIN is built around that: who is contacted, who can see what, and who can write to whom are all decided with a child’s safety first. ## Messages go to guardians - **When a club records a guardian for a player, the guardian is contacted and the player is not.** Squad, fixture, session and availability messages, and anything the club writes to its players, go to every guardian recorded for them. - **A guardian is only ever linked by the club.** A club admin adds the link, approves a join request a guardian filled in, or invites the player and guardian together. Nobody can make themselves a child’s guardian. - **Guardians act for their players.** They answer availability, consents and the club’s documents on the player’s behalf, in the Player Hub. - **We never decide anything from a date of birth.** Many players’ dates of birth are never recorded, and a rule that guessed would fail for exactly those children. What decides who is contacted is the guardian your club has recorded, so recording guardians is the most important thing a youth section can do. ## Nobody can message a child privately - **LEKKIN has no private messages, between anyone.** There is no way for one person to write to another one-to-one. - **A club writes to groups, never to a chosen person.** Club admins can send a message to all of the club’s admins, all its team managers, everyone, or all its players (through their guardians). Every message is recorded. - **A governing body can’t write to your players.** A county or league body can write to clubs’ admins. The only thing that reaches your players or their guardians from a body is the standard notice when a league fixture is arranged or changes. ## Team messages are open, and looked after - **Each team has one conversation, and everyone in it sees the same thing.** The coaches post; each player's guardians read and reply. Where a player has no guardian recorded, the player is in it themselves, except on a youth team, where they are left out until the club records a guardian. - **Nothing said can be changed or taken back by whoever said it.** No editing, no deleting. What was written stays as it was written. - **Anyone in it can report a post.** The club's Welfare Officer is told straight away, or the club's admins if it has none. Nobody else is told who reported it. - **The Welfare Officer can read every team's messages**, hide a post with a reason (everyone sees that something was hidden, not what), and export a conversation in full for a referral. They cannot post, and every time they open a team's messages from outside it, that is recorded. - **Emails say a message is waiting, never what it says.** The words stay on LEKKIN, where the club can hide them. - **Messages are kept for two years**, or six where anything in the thread was reported or hidden, because a concern can come to light late. ## People see only what their role needs - **A player or guardian sees their own information**, and the player they act for, and nobody else’s. Fixtures and sessions show when and where, not who else is in the squad. In a team's messages they see the name of whoever posts or replies, and nothing else about them. - **Everyone who can see a child’s details signs in with two steps.** Every club admin, secretary, team manager and anyone else with a role must sign in with a passkey (Face ID, a fingerprint or their device’s PIN) or an authenticator app, as well as their password. Required from 1 November 2026, and anyone given a role after that has 30 days to set it up. Players and guardians, who only ever see their own details, don’t need it. - **A team manager sees their own team.** A club admin sees their own club. Every request is checked on our servers, not just hidden in the app. - **Consent answers stay with the club’s admins.** A manager sees only that a player has said no to photographs, beside their name, not the full record. - **Public pages show no players.** Your club’s join page and pitch booking page show the club and its teams, never a player’s name. ## Your club stays in charge - **Consent, asked properly.** Every player is asked about privacy, photographs and the code of conduct, in words written for the player and separate words for a guardian. Your club can add questions of its own. - **Your safeguarding policy, read.** Upload your policy and mark it _must read_, and you can see who has opened it. Upload a new version and everyone is asked again. - **Private files stay private.** Your club’s documents are never on a public link. Each time someone opens one, they get a link that stops working five minutes later. - **Every change is recorded.** Your club’s admins can see what changed and who changed it. When LEKKIN support has to act on someone’s behalf, it is recorded as support, and support can’t answer a consent or open a document as somebody else. - **Anyone can turn emails off.** Every email has a link to stop that kind of email, which works without signing in, including for a guardian with no account. ## What LEKKIN doesn’t replace Software can make the safe way the easy way. It can’t be your club’s safeguarding. Your club still needs its own **Welfare Officer**, its own safeguarding policy, the checks your sport requires for people who work with children, and guardians recorded for its young players. ## If you are worried about a child - **If a child is in immediate danger, call 999.** - **Tell your club’s Welfare Officer.** They know the child and the club, and they will know who to involve next. - **Or your sport’s governing body.** In football, that is your County FA’s designated safeguarding officer: see [how to report a concern](https://www.thefa.com/football-rules-governance/safeguarding/section-2-reporting-concerns) on the FA’s site. - **The NSPCC helpline** is for any adult worried about a child: 0808 800 5000, or [help@nspcc.org.uk](mailto:help@nspcc.org.uk). Children and young people can talk to [Childline](https://www.childline.org.uk/). - **If the concern is about something on LEKKIN**, such as a message, a photo or someone’s access, also email us at [hello@lekkin.com](mailto:hello@lekkin.com) and we will help your club deal with it. How we handle personal data is set out in the [privacy notice](/privacy/).