Built for professional football academies

Your coaches are making adjustments. Very little of it would survive a challenge.

Assist helps academy staff support neurodivergent players: recognising what’s happening, responding with practical reasonable adjustments, and recording what was tried.

Many players won’t arrive with a diagnosis, an EHCP or a neat support plan. The duty to respond does not wait until they do.

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Neurodivergent player support No diagnosis required Under 2 minutes to log Timestamped records Academy welfare visibility

Coach log

Observable behaviour

Player moved away from warm-up group after whistle and covered ears.

U13 sessionArrival / warm-up

Sensory overload

No diagnosis added. No label attached. Just what the coach observed.

FMHA suggested adjustments

1Warn the player before sharp sound cues or switch to a visual cue during warm-up.

2Offer a quieter arrival point and a clear route back into the group.

3Record outcome after the next session so the welfare lead can spot repeat patterns.

Observation, adjustment and outcome ready to record

£20k-£30k

Realistic academy exposure from one complaint investigation once staff time, management drag and legal support start stacking up.

Neurodivergent player support

What support looks like in academy football.

Neurodivergent players in your programme may struggle with cold or wet kit, noisy changing rooms, verbal-only instructions, late changes to sessions, unclear transitions between drills, unstructured arrival time, parent-at-boundary pressure, or the social demands of squad environments.

Most of those barriers are manageable. Few require a diagnosis before support can begin. All require someone to notice what is happening, try something sensible, and record what happened next.

Assist is a neurodivergent player support tool that creates the evidence trail academies should already have.

“Phil knows about it” is not a system.

Every academy has a Phil. The coach who remembers the parent conversation. The welfare staff member who knows which player needs preparation before transitions. The age-group lead who has tried three adjustments but never put them anywhere central. Good people. Bad infrastructure.

A parent asks what adjustments have been made. The coach remembers a few. The welfare lead has part of the picture. The age-group lead thinks it was handled. The academy now has to reconstruct a timeline from memory, messages and fragments.

Coach memory

WhatsApp fragments

Parent screenshots

No clean audit trail

Realistic academy exposure £20k - £30k

One complaint investigation can burn serious staff time, legal support and management energy before it ever reaches a formal hearing.

The issue is often not that nobody cared. The issue is that nobody can prove what happened.

When a player's support needs are challenged, the question is not whether someone cared. The question is what the academy can evidence.

Adjustments may have been made. Conversations may have taken place. Coaches may have tried sensible things. But when the record is scattered across inboxes, memory, notebooks and messages, the academy is left reconstructing care after the complaint has landed.

Assist is built to stop reasonable adjustments living in people’s heads.

Academy scenarios

This is where the gap shows up.

These are not edge cases. They are ordinary academy moments that become expensive, stressful and reputationally awkward when nobody has a structured record.

The same parent has raised the same concern for months.

The academy says staff have tried adjustments. The parent says nothing changed. Nobody can produce a clear timeline of observations, actions and outcomes.

A player is labelled difficult when they were overloaded.

The behaviour was visible: withdrawal, shutdown, refusal, agitation. The record only says attitude issue. That is not player support. It is a liability trail.

An EPPP welfare conversation asks for evidence.

The academy has values, policies and good people. What it needs in that moment is a clean record showing what was recognised, what was tried and what happened next.

Everyone thought someone else had logged it.

The coach told the age-group lead. The age-group lead told welfare. Welfare thought it was already in the file. That chain is not evidence.

Recognise. Respond. Record.

Recognise the behaviour. Respond with an adjustment. Record what happened. That is the product logic, the coach workflow and the evidence trail in one line.

How Assist works

Three actions. One defensible record.

Assist turns player support from informal intent into structured action. Coaches do not need to diagnose. They log what they see, choose what they try, and close the loop.

Recognise.

The coach logs the observable behaviour and the session context in under two minutes.

Player selected from squad list
Behaviour category chosen
Training, match, arrival, warm-up or departure context added
Short observation note captured

Respond.

Assist suggests practical reasonable adjustments from the FMHA adjustment library.

Suggestions are football-specific
No clinical language required
No diagnosis required
Safeguarding gate redirects concerns that need welfare action

Record.

The observation, adjustment and outcome are stored in the Player Support Record.

Timestamped entry
Named staff action
Outcome review
Exportable PDF, CSV and audit trail for academy leads

What gets recorded

Not a note. A Player Support Record.

A reasonable adjustment is only defensible if the academy can show what need was recognised, what action was taken, whether it helped, and whether concerns were escalated. Assist builds that timeline as coaches work. Support should not reset every time a player changes coach, age group or phase.

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Observable behaviour

What staff saw, in football language. Not a diagnosis. Not a label. A clear description of the moment.

Session context

Training, matchday, arrival, transition, changing room, parent boundary, warm-up, drill or departure.

Adjustment tried

The practical support action selected by the coach, aligned to an approved adjustment category.

Outcome and next step

Helped, partly helped, did not help, not yet tried, or needs welfare lead review. This is where the loop closes.

Academy visibility

Welfare leads and academy admins can see patterns across squads, staff and age groups before the same issue repeats.

The AI does not freestyle

Assist is not throwing random advice at coaches.

Academy staff will rightly be cautious about AI-generated advice. Assist is designed around a curated FMHA adjustment library. The AI layer selects and adapts from approved adjustment content. It does not invent diagnoses, clinical explanations or unsupported interventions.

EHRC guidance SEND Code of Practice NICE NG87 NICE NG142 CPSU Youth Sport Trust FMHA practitioner review

79.

Curated adjustment entries

Covering sensory overload, emotional regulation, processing and focus, social interaction, movement and coordination, transitions and routine, communication and expression, plus real football scenarios including changing rooms, parent-at-boundary situations and cold or wet kit sensory issues.

The legal frame

Strong enough to matter. Honest enough to trust.

Assist should never overclaim. It does not guarantee compliance. It creates structured evidence that can support an academy demonstrating proactive reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act 2010.

The duty is about reasonable adjustments.

The Equality Act 2010 sets out the duty to make reasonable adjustments and treats failure to comply with that duty as discrimination.

The duty can be anticipatory.

For service providers, the EHRC describes the duty as anticipatory. Organisations must think ahead about barriers and support needs.

Documentation is not compliance by itself.

But without documentation, proving what was recognised, tried and reviewed becomes much harder when challenged.

What Assist is not

Clear boundaries matter.

Assist is built to help academies act earlier and record better. It is not trying to become a clinical, legal or safeguarding platform.

Not diagnostic

Coaches log behaviours and adjustments. They do not diagnose autism, ADHD, dyspraxia or any other condition.

Not legal advice

Assist supports evidence-building. It does not certify that any specific adjustment is legally sufficient.

Not a safeguarding system

Assist includes a safeguarding gate and escalation logic, but safeguarding concerns should follow the academy’s established procedures.

Questions academies will ask

Practical answers, not brochure fluff.

Will coaches actually use it?

That is the whole point. If it takes 40 minutes and feels like admin, it dies. Assist is designed for pitchside logging in under two minutes. The coach recognises the behaviour, selects the context, chooses an adjustment and records the outcome later.

Do players need a diagnosis before support is logged?

No. Assist is behaviour-first. Coaches record what they observe and what they try. The academy should not wait for a formal diagnosis before considering practical reasonable adjustments.

What happens if it is actually safeguarding?

The app includes a safeguarding gate. If the concern is not a coaching adjustment situation, the coach is redirected to safeguarding procedure and the relevant welfare route.

Can welfare leads see patterns?

Yes. The academy version is designed for age groups, squads, coaches and welfare visibility. Repeated behaviours in the same category should not sit unnoticed in separate staff conversations.

Can records be exported?

Yes. Admins can export structured records including a formatted reasonable-adjustments PDF, CSV data and audit history. That matters for complaints, internal review and welfare evidence.

Assist for professional football academies

Don’t wait until a complaint proves your record system wasn’t good enough.

If your coaches are already making adjustments, Assist gives your academy the structure to recognise support needs, respond consistently and record the evidence before anyone asks for it.

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