Following the huge success of work across the Football League in the last few seasons we are looking forward to keeping up the momentum during the 2026/27 season.
Over 30 live sessions are already in the diary this side of Christmas with many clubs now taking a more structured approach to their ‘Parental Engagement’ programmes. It has been a privilege over the last few seasons to help build some of these programmes from scratch, working with academy management, coaches and parents to ensure that the work that we do is having the maximum impact.
With over 100 live and virtual sessions taking place over the last couple of seasons we have been able to gather real insight to the needs and demands of the parents that we are working with and currently store a huge amount of information which is allowing us to tailor and drive this work forward.
Crucially, this data is not just a small snapshot as it runs into thousands of responses. The lived experiences, authentic conversations and feedback have provided us with some generic themes, but we are also now in a position to be more context specific to individual clubs and the requirements of those specific environments.
Alongside the live sessions every parent across the Football League will be given access to a customised WWPIS platform tailored with content to support the journey of being a parent of an academy footballer and a high performing young athlete. Over 2,500 footballing families continue to access the content, and we are looking forward to a raft of new registrations at the start of this coming season.
To aid clubs and staff further we have also created whole season social media plans to help keep conversations going at specific points in the season and have catalogued all of the WWPIS content. This will allow clubs to share content regularly across both their social media channels and in house communication channels.
CEO Gordon MacLelland said, ‘We are incredibly proud of all the work we have done in partnership with League Football Education. A few seasons ago could only have dreamt of where we are today. However, there will be no resting on our laurels as we continue to drive this work forward with a whole host of new projects due for release in the next six months to further enhance the work already taking place.’
