Setting up your junior club

Before your club can enrol any under-18 member, you must declare a safeguarding scope. This is a one-time setup step carried out by the Chairman or Secretary. The platform will block every junior invitation until the declaration is on record.

If you chose "Adults and juniors" or "Juniors only" when you created your club, we already seeded a junior membership tier and flagged your club as accepting juniors. That's a head start, not the declaration itself: you still need to complete the steps below.

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The three postures

Every club on Badminton Clubhouse has one of three safeguarding postures:

You choose Mixed or Juniors only during setup. You can switch between them later, subject to the constraints below.

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Precondition 1: a Designated Safeguarding Lead

You must have at least one active club member who holds the Welfare Officer role. This person is your Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) and their name is recorded alongside your safeguarding posture.

If you do not have a Welfare Officer yet:

1. Go to Admin > Team.
2. Find the relevant member (or invite them if they are not yet on the platform).
3. Assign the Welfare Officer role.
4. Return to Admin > Settings > Safeguarding.

The platform checks this in real time. The Enable junior membership toggle will be greyed out until a Welfare Officer exists.

For more on roles, see Roles and Permissions.

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Precondition 2: the three required consents

Your club must have all three of these consent categories active:

• Photography and media - permission to photograph and film juniors at club activities
• Participation in activities - agreement that the child can take part in the sport
• Emergency medical treatment - authorisation for first aid and emergency treatment if needed

These categories are normally pre-populated the first time you visit the safeguarding settings page. If any are missing or deactivated, the settings page will show a warning with a link to the consent configuration.

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Enabling junior membership

Once both preconditions are satisfied:

1. Go to Admin > Settings > Safeguarding.
2. Under Junior section, toggle Enable junior membership on.
3. A confirmation dialog appears. Review the summary and confirm.
4. Choose your posture: Mixed or Juniors only.
5. Save.

The system performs a final check of both preconditions before saving. If anything is not in place, it will surface the gap rather than saving a partial state.

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The Onboarding page

If you chose "Adults and juniors" or "Juniors only" when creating your club, Onboarding is the first page you land on in the admin area, and it stays your admin home until setup is done. You'll also find it in the sidebar for as long as it's active.

For a junior or mixed club, the checklist opens with a Safeguarding essentials group, listed first and separate from the rest:

1. Complete the junior membership declaration
2. Assign a welfare officer
3. Verify a DBS for the safeguarding lead
4. Create a junior membership tier
5. Open junior registration

Each safeguarding item that must be done before you can accept juniors carries a Required chip. Below safeguarding essentials, two more groups cover the rest of setup: Club basics (adding members, venues, a season, your first event) and Going further (publishing your public page, getting listed in Find a Club, setting up payments), each optional at your own pace. The public page and the Find-a-Club listing are separate steps because they are separate decisions: the page is your shareable advert at /c/{your-slug}, while the listing opts you into the public search index. Many junior clubs publish the page to share with guardians directly and deliberately stay out of search; the checklist treats that as a valid choice, not unfinished setup. The season step only appears for clubs that also have adult members, so a juniors-only club will not see it.

Every row links straight to where you complete it, and the page tracks a running count of steps done against the total for your club (the total varies slightly between mixed and juniors-only clubs).

Making Dashboard your home

Once every step is done, Onboarding shows a completion screen and the Dashboard becomes your admin home from then on. You don't have to finish everything first, though: the Make Dashboard my home button lets you move on early. If any Required safeguarding item is still outstanding, you'll see a confirmation first, and those items follow you to the Dashboard's needs-attention panel as warnings until you resolve them, so dismissing the checklist can't quietly hide unfinished safeguarding work.

Reopening it later

Dismissed or completed the checklist but need it again? Go to Admin > Settings, find the Onboarding checklist card, and click Reopen onboarding. It picks up exactly where it left off, with every step's status recalculated live.

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How the admin area adapts

The sidebar reflects who your club is for. If you answered "Adults and juniors" or "Juniors only" when creating the club, it adapts from the very start; otherwise it updates the moment your posture declaration is saved:

• Juniors appears under the People section (the junior register)
• Junior pathway settings become available
• Welfare holds become visible on the safeguarding hub
• The Members page gains an Adults / Juniors / All filter (Mixed clubs only)
• Juniors-only clubs also lose adult surfaces they have no use for (Find players, Visitors, Visit requests, Surveys). Competitions and Teams stay, for junior league play.

Adults-only clubs see none of the junior items. Switching to Mixed or Juniors only reveals them; switching back hides them again.

While the setup checklist is live, the sidebar also keeps the focus on setup: the Committee, Communications, Money, and Insights sections start collapsed. Click a section title to expand it at any time; everything opens permanently once onboarding is done or dismissed.

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The gate before the child

The safeguarding posture is a hard gate. If a guardian receives a junior invitation email and attempts to accept it before the posture is active, they will see a clear message that the club has not yet enabled junior membership. The acceptance journey cannot be completed until the posture is in place.

This means you can prepare and send junior invitations in advance, but the guardian cannot complete acceptance (and the junior will not appear on your roll) until you have finished setup. This is by design.

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Switching posture after setup

You can change the posture after setup within these limits:

• Mixed to Juniors only (or vice versa): allowed at any time.
• Back to Adults only: only permitted when there are no active junior members on the roll. If active juniors exist, the control is locked until each junior is archived or their membership lapses.

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Related articles

• Running a Junior Club (overview)
• Running a Junior Section
• Roles and Permissions
• Junior memberships and fees
• Safeguarding and adult oversight