EFL clubs trial wellbeing platform

A new digital wellbeing platform designed to identify vulnerable young people who may be struggling is being trialled by four English Football League (EFL) clubs.

Gloucestershire entrepreneur and former teacher Chris Powell has launched SaferIn, which gives organisations responsible for large numbers of young people a way to identify potential wellbeing concerns and provide earlier support.

The platform’s first market is football academies, where individual player care managers can be responsible for more than 120 young players.

Chris said: “When we spoke to people who played at the highest level, it was clear that ownership of their own safety was never on their radar, simply because nobody had ever built the system to include them. 

“SaferIn is designed to change that – young players check in daily on how they’re doing, and the people responsible for them can see who needs support immediately, not after something has gone wrong.”

Trials are underway at four EFL clubs, with findings expected to be presented to the league later this year before participating clubs support a presentation on SaferIn’s impact to other EFL clubs at its North and South Conferences next April.

At the first participating club, SaferIn flagged a young player experiencing difficulties within 20 minutes of going live, enabling its player care team to provide support that day.

Chris developed the technology after more than a decade running Bespoke Mentoring, which supports young people aged between five and 25 across five counties following referrals from schools and local authorities, and has since grown from five employees to almost 40 while tripling in size financially.

Before developing SaferIn, he also gathered insight from 30 former professional footballers, including internationals and long-serving Premier League players, about their experiences of welfare and support.

The platform emerged after Chris completed the Government-backed Help to Grow: Management Course at the University of Gloucestershire Business School in 2024, which encouraged him to explore ways of scaling his work.

The 12-week programme provides SME leaders with training, one-to-one mentoring and peer networking.

Chris said: “Bespoke Mentoring was never built to be national – it’s one mentor and one young person at a time, and that’s the point of it. 

“Taking part in the Help to Grow: Management Course allowed me to think about how we could continue doing what we do well at Bespoke while also helping people on a larger scale. 

“I actually got the idea for SaferIn in the middle of one of the course sessions and used every session after that to build the business case. 

“The mentoring aspect of the course helped me to understand how SaferIn is different from my original business and work out how I could build it to scale much earlier than I had with Bespoke Mentoring. 

“I honestly don’t think SaferIn would exist without that time to stop, reflect and create.”

Flora Hamilton, executive director of the small business charter which delivers the Help to Grow: Management Course, added: “Chris’ story captures something we see again and again on the course – a founder who has built a business through sheer purpose, given the space to step back and ask what it could become. 

“He arrived running a mentoring company helping one young person at a time, and left building a platform with the potential to reach every academy player in professional football.

“What makes his story remarkable is that he developed the SaferIn business case live in the sessions, with the support of his mentor and a peer network of fellow business owners; that’s exactly what the course is for. 

“We’re proud the course played its part in the creation of this exciting enterprise, and we’ll be watching SaferIn’s next chapter closely.”

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