​​​​​​​Child Employment Month 2024

It’s that time of year again, Child Employment Awareness Month.

It is an opportunity for Local Authorities to prioritise child employment in your areas over the month of April or May. Please view all the resources that are available on the NNCEE website (in the Members Area) to help you in planning, promoting and carrying out work to raise awareness during this time.

As you are aware this year there has been a lot of work behind the scenes in creating the Child Employment Guidance (also available now on the website) as well as the ongoing work with the DfE and our Sporting Partners on the reviewing the regulations and we hope to bring you all some updates from this work soon. Can we also draw your attention to some advice that we are sending out with regards to Ball Assistants this has come out of our work alongside the Premier League Safeguarding Team , again this advice is on the website and has also been forwarded to your regional chairs to share with you all.

As always if you need any help or support please do get in touch.

Ball Assistants

Following a lot of discussion with the Premier League and to help with some consistency around the role of ball assistants at sports clubs, we have put together some interim guidance to be shared with all Local Authorities. It is also our aim to share this also with all sports governing bodies so that they too can disseminate to their members. The guidance is to help in those circumstances where you may receive a call from your local sports club to ask if their young people need a work permit. These may be young people from their academies or the community. Either way it is the understanding and view from the NNCEE and the Premier League that young people used as ball assistants, albeit voluntary or paid, should have a work permit.

We would like this to begin from the start of the new season which starts in August.  We are not suggesting for those that have current arrangements in place that they need to change these but for those that haven’t then it may be an idea to start thinking how to manage if the applications come in and it may also be that some clubs are keen to get things in place and may contact you directly.

A couple of suggestions to help the process (and please we are not trying to tell you what to do these are just suggestions and some good practice that is already out there) would be for those Local Authorities that contact the schools regarding attendance/attainment before issuing work permits would be to give them a cut off to get back to you, say 5 working days, and if they do not respond then to assume all is ok to issue the permit. Ask the club for just one risk assessment for all children. Those that can (again it may not be easy for those that have electronic application systems in place), ask for one application that covers the employers’ details and then just separate form for the children’s details. If any authority that is having any difficulties or issues, then please come to me and I can link in with the clubs or the premiere league if necessary.

We do not anticipate that these arrangements will be for the long term, and we hope that through our discussions and regular meetings with the dfe the licensing requirements for paid sport and employment of young people in the sporting industry will be reviewed and amended.

Michelle Clement-Evans (Nottingham County Council - michelle.clement-evans@nottscc.gov.uk)