Parents workshops – best practice example

We’ve spoken to Welsh Gymnastics about their national parents workshops, in the hope that other sports can use it as a model for their own face-to-face communications with parents.

In late 2018, Welsh Gymnastics piloted a number of induction workshops for parents across Wales. They had a very positive uptake, with 50 parents attending the first session and around 40 attending each subsequent session.

What was covered?

A variety of basic information for parents was provided during each session, some of which included: 

• being introduced to the staff working with their children
• a tour of the facilities
• discussions around parents expectations
• the parents roles in competitions and positively supporting their child
• basic information on nutrition and training lifestyle

How it works

Workshop leaders found that both the timing and location of the sessions was key to their success.

Welsh Gymnastics made it as easy as possible for parents to attend by holding the workshops at the same time as their child’s training session – sessions that parents were likely to be at anyway. This created a cost and time effective way of reaching out to parents.

The workshops were filmed and shared with parents that couldn’t make the sessions to make them as inclusive as possible and ensure messages were communicated to all parents.

Through these pilot sessions, Welsh Gymnastics were able to pick up on the key issues and concerns parents have. They have since developed a parent’s curriculum to help parents learn even more about supporting their child, which they hope to deliver over the coming 12 months to even more parents.

Making it work for you

There are so many different ways of communicating with parents in your sport, face-to-face workshops is just one of them.

This is an example of speaking to large groups of parents of talented young athletes, however if you’re a small sport or club with fewer participants and parents, smaller or one on one discussions with parents might be more viable.

If location is an issue for your sport, why not use technology to your advantage and try low cost webinars, YouTube videos or podcasts as an alternative.