Children's coaching organisation, Football For Fun have set themselves a tough task - to be the most professional community football coaching organisation in the country. To help them achieve it, they called in Leaps and Bounds for some assistance.

Football coaching is an emerging industry, offering a meaningful career to many youngsters who are keen sportsmen and women and work well with other young people. However, because the industry is in the early stages of development, it is unregulated and in extreme cases, open to abuse.

Football For Fun Director, Ray Lee explains:

"To differentiate Football For Fun from any other coaching organisation, we have to be represented by the best coaches. Not simply the coaches with the best footballing ability, on the contrary, those with the highest standards of care, service quality and reliability. When parents see the Football For Fun logo, they must identify with what they are getting - a high quality service."

Ray Lee is a man who should know. Having spent many years at Arsenal Football Club and a host of other professional and semi-professional outfits, Ray has seen the best and the worst in football coaching.

"Everything we do is driven by the desire to provide a high-quality coaching service in a happy, fun environment. To ensure this happens each and every time, we must have systems that monitor our performance and promote best practice amongst all of our coaches. In a new and growing field such as football coaching, this is not easy - Leaps and Bounds are heping us to do it."

To ensure that this consistent, high quality service is delivered, Leaps and Bounds have provided Business Development support to Football For Fun over a sustained period. A major component of the work has comprised the design of a registration system. This ensures that any coach applying to work for Football For Fun is registered and that their qualifications and references are fully checked. From the registration process, police checks are carried out to ensure that no coach has an undisclosed criminal record. Finally, the registration process rates the skills of the applicant so tht a skills database can be created. Using this Football For Fun can make sure they allocate the appropriate coaches to each session. Once registered, continuing professional development is recorded so that gaps in a coach's expericence or knowledge can be filled through seminars on key policy relating to issues such as child protection.

Judging by the attitude of Ray Lee and his team at Football For Fun, the days of kids chasing balls on muddy pitches in the pouring rain without proper supervision might be behind us. About time too- our kids deserve better.