The FMHA

The FMHA The Grassroots Mental Health Vault
FREE Mental health support tools for ALL in grassroots football.

One thing I’ve learned through all the work we’ve done around mental health, neurodiversity and sport is that the proble...
05/06/2026

One thing I’ve learned through all the work we’ve done around mental health, neurodiversity and sport is that the problem is rarely that people don’t care.

Usually, people do care. That’s what makes it frustrating.

A coach notices something. A parents/carers/guardians (PCGs) mentions something after training. A welfare officer has a quiet conversation. Someone adapts because they’ve worked out that a player needs instructions differently, or needs a bit more time, or gets unsettled when plans change without warning. Good things are happening all the time in clubs, but too much of it depends on the right adult remembering the right conversation at the right moment.

That’s fine until life gets in the way. The coach can’t make training. The player moves group. A tournament comes around. A different adult takes the session. The club grows. The welfare lead changes. Suddenly, something that was known isn’t known anymore, and the player is back to being misunderstood.

I don’t think that’s good enough, and I don’t think it’s fair on volunteers either. We keep expecting people to carry important information around in their heads while asking them to do more and more for the same club, usually in the evenings, often after work, and often for no money.

Player Passport gives that information somewhere proper to live. PCG input, welfare review, coach-facing guidance, all kept simple enough that clubs might actually use it.

That last bit matters. There’s no point building another system that looks clever but dies the minute it meets a wet Thursday night.

http://www.playerpassport.uk

Something is happening in grassroots sport that hasn't happened before.Clubs are seeing their numbers.Not estimated. Not...
05/06/2026

Something is happening in grassroots sport that hasn't happened before.

Clubs are seeing their numbers.

Not estimated. Not approximated. A specific social value figure - their players, their volunteers, their community programmes - calculated using the same methodology that Sport England, NHS commissioners, and local authorities use to evaluate investment.

And when they see it, something changes. The club secretary who's been writing grant applications for years and never won one suddenly has the language she was missing. The chair who's been in a conversation with the council about the lease renewal suddenly has an evidence base. The volunteer coordinator who's been trying to persuade people to give their time suddenly has a number that shows what that time is worth.

This is what happens when 20 clubs complete their Proof of Play assessments. 30 clubs. 50 clubs.

The individual reports matter. But the aggregate picture that builds when a County FA or Active Partnership has dozens of clubs in their network with documented social value, that's what changes the sector-level conversation.

We're at the beginning of that. The data is building. The picture is coming into focus.

www.proofofplay.uk

Pro Academies: How do you document reasonable adjustments for neurodiverse players?Are you creating timestamped evidence...
05/06/2026

Pro Academies: How do you document reasonable adjustments for neurodiverse players?

Are you creating timestamped evidence of Equality Act compliance?

Do you know which adjustments are working?

Assist is the first compliance documentation app built specifically for football's neurodiversity support obligations.

⚡ Log observable behaviours in under 2 minutes

⚡ Get evidence-based adjustment suggestions

⚡ Automatic compliance documentation

⚡ Track what works across your team

No diagnosis required. Built for pro academy contexts.

Developed in response to academy documentation failures - providing litigation protection while improving player outcomes.

Find out more → https://assets.thefmha.com/assist-academies

One thing I’ve learned from grassroots football is that the adults usually know far more about a player than any registr...
04/06/2026

One thing I’ve learned from grassroots football is that the adults usually know far more about a player than any registration form suggests.

The coach knows they don’t like being shouted across the pitch. The parent knows they need a bit of warning before a change. The welfare officer might know there’s something going on at home, or that the player gets overwhelmed in certain environments. Someone has usually spotted the pattern. Someone has usually adapted.

But the problem is that most of this information doesn’t belong to the club. It belongs to memory.

And yes, in football the same coach often moves up with the age group, so this isn’t always about a brand-new coach walking in cold every season. It’s more complicated than that. Coaches miss sessions. Assistants step in. Players train across age groups. Teams go to tournaments. Welfare officers change. Parents repeat the same thing to different people and eventually get tired of feeling like they’re making a fuss.

That’s where things break down. Not because people don’t care, but because the information that helps a player feel understood is too often scattered across conversations, WhatsApp messages, old paper forms, and someone’s memory from a wet Tuesday night in November.

That’s why we’ve built Player Passport.

It gives parents/carers/guardians (PCGs) a simple way to share what matters. It gives welfare leads control over what is reviewed and shared. And it gives coaches the practical player information they actually need before the difficult moment happens, without turning it into a medical file or a load of extra admin they’ll never have time to read.

For me, this is about making sure the player isn’t relying on luck. Luck that the right adult remembers. Luck that the message gets passed on. Luck that the PCG feels able to explain it all again.

Good support should be held by the club, not just carried around in people’s heads.

http://www.playerpassport.uk

"We can't make adjustments without a diagnosis."Wrong.The Equality Act doesn't require a diagnosis. It requires reasonab...
04/06/2026

"We can't make adjustments without a diagnosis."

Wrong.

The Equality Act doesn't require a diagnosis. It requires reasonable adjustments when someone is placed at a substantial disadvantage.

Waiting lists for ADHD assessments: 2-3 years in some areas.

Autism assessments: even longer.

Kids can't wait that long.

Assist App works on OBSERVABLE BEHAVIOURS:

📋 Log what you see

📋 Get evidence-based suggestions

📋 Implement adjustments

📋 Document what works

No diagnosis needed. Just good coaching.

Developed for grassroots and academy contexts.

Find out more → https://assets.thefmha.com/assist-academies

Headline talking points for Proof of Play:So far in a few weeks, Proof of Play has unearthed: £48.14M of social value ev...
04/06/2026

Headline talking points for Proof of Play:

So far in a few weeks, Proof of Play has unearthed:

£48.14M of social value evidenced across 50 clubs - backed by HM Treasury methodology.

14,525 participants and 2,977 volunteers captured to date - with an average of £963K of documented value per club.

5,056 participants estimated to have additional needs - evidence that grassroots football is reaching the clubs and communities hardest to serve.

Find yours here: www.proofofplay.uk

Contact me if you'd like to join the 100 Club.....

I’ve been thinking a lot about how much we ask of community sports coaches without ever really giving them the informati...
03/06/2026

I’ve been thinking a lot about how much we ask of community sports coaches without ever really giving them the information they need.

We expect them to manage behaviour, build confidence, spot when something isn’t right, adapt communication, include every child, keep PCGs happy, watch safeguarding, run a decent session and somehow make sure everyone leaves feeling like sport is still a place for them. Then we give them a registration form with an emergency contact number and maybe a medical note if they’re lucky.

That gap is mad when you actually stop and look at it.

Most parents/carers/guardians (PCGs) know the things that would help. They know whether their child needs a bit of warning before a change. They know if loud instructions make things worse. They know if their child goes quiet when overwhelmed, or needs a job to do while they settle, or struggles with certain environments. Quite often, coaches work some of this out too, but it ends up sitting in their head, in a WhatsApp message, or in a conversation that happened beside a pitch, court, pool or changing room months ago.

Player Passport is built to close that gap. It gives PCGs a simple way to share what matters, gives the club or welfare lead control over what gets reviewed and shared, and gives coaches the sort of practical information they can actually use when they’re working with the player.

http://www.playerpassport.uk

I don’t think professional academies have a lack of care problem when it comes to neurodivergent players.That’s not what...
03/06/2026

I don’t think professional academies have a lack of care problem when it comes to neurodivergent players.

That’s not what I’m told when in meetings.

What I’m seeing is something much more awkward. Lots of good support happening, but not enough of it being written down in a way that would actually stand up if someone asked the difficult question later.

And football is full of these little invisible support moments. A coach knows a player needs warning before a change in session. Someone in player care knows the changing room can send them under. A parent/carer/guardian mentioned something important on the phone six weeks ago. An age group coach tried something that worked, but it stayed in their head because training finished, the next group came in, and everyone moved on. That isn’t neglect. It’s football.

Busy, stretched, reactive, full of people trying to do the right thing while spinning twelve plates.

But if the club ever has to explain what support was put in place, “we all knew about it” is not much of a defence.

That’s the gap Assist is built for.

It gives academy staff a simple way to record what they noticed, what they tried, and whether it helped. No diagnosis needed. No clinical language. No pretending coaches are psychologists. Just a proper record of player support before everyone is trying to rebuild the story backwards.

I think this is where football is heading, whether it likes it or not.

The clubs that get ahead of it now will look attract and retain the best talent. The clubs that wait will end up doing it in a panic later.

https://assets.thefmha.com/assist-academies

The best bit of feedback I got last week wasn't "great tool." It was this:"It has been very easy to complete and it seem...
03/06/2026

The best bit of feedback I got last week wasn't "great tool." It was this:

"It has been very easy to complete and it seems you are already ahead of me and have addressed some of the issues I encountered previously. It's great to see that the ability to edit is now there, as not only do people like me make mistakes entering the data, numbers do indeed keep changing."

Two things in there worth sitting with.

First: grassroots clubs' numbers change. Players come and go. Volunteers drop off or join. Community reach grows in season, shrinks in winter. That isn't sloppy reporting - that's the reality of running a club on weekends. Any tool that locks the data at submission is punishing clubs for running as clubs do.

Second: "you are already ahead of me." We'd shipped the edit function before they asked, because we'd seen the pattern. That is what building with the sector, rather than for it, actually looks like in practice.

www.proofofplay.uk

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