News & Updates

CAPS stands for Club Action Planning Scheme. With three grades to aspire to, Bronze, Silver and Gold, it is England Netball’s benchmark set of standards for safeguarding, club management and development. All clubs are required to achieve Bronze as a minimum to be accredited by our national sporting authority.

Thunderbirds achieved its Bronze award during its first season in April 2016. Back then, the club had a full compliment of coaches and parent volunteers. It also had an ambitious but achievable game plan to meet the insatiable appetite for junior netball in Stratford upon Avon. So efficient was our rise and expansion, we were nominated for an England Netball “Goalden Globe” award.

Each club is reassessed every four years, much like a school Ofsted inspection, by EN’s local representative. Thunderbirds should have been reassessed in June 2020 but due to Covid-19 this is been postponed until the New Year 2021. The club had its sights on the Silver standard, but the pandemic has made getting our junior members back to training and competing again a priority.

Sadly, due to a disturbing lack of new parent volunteers to take on essential roles, we face the troubling prospect of not only failing to meet the conditions of our Club Constitution, we risk our Bronze status. This in turn undermines everything our coaches, players and Committee have worked hard to achieve.

The irony is, the club could not be in better shape; we have experience and titles under our belts, Kelly and Molly have a requisite club development plan, we have excellent facilities and equipment at our disposal and club finances are healthy. All policies and procedures are all in place yet we do not have all the volunteers we need to tick all the CAPS boxes. This is despite our membership being five times greater than when we started in 2015.

There is an urgent need for more Mums and Dads to come forward, to share the workload and keep our club alive. Many of our Executive Committee also have Team Manager responsibilities as well as busy working and family lives.

To repeat a recent appeal and support the sentiment of our club manager in her 2021 overview, we urgently need a Club Secretary, a Volunteer Coordinator, GDPR officer and qualified umpire to meet our CAPS expectation. The club also needs a Kit Secretary and Equipment Secretary plus a pool of willing helpers for peak time activity, e.g. annual awards night and membership renewals.

An hour or two a month can g a long way! Job descriptions for most roles are included on our volunteers page or are available on request.

To find out more please contact the club and/or Elaine.Binks@talktalk.net. Thank you.