When it comes to sport parents can either be your biggest ally or greatest obstacle, often with no middle ground. They can either spark or spoil the development process, depending on how we as coaches educate them, engage them and collaborate with them.

Parents have the ultimate influence over their children and it is up to us to find ways as coaches to channel this in the most positive way for the child playing sport.

In creating this course, CEO of WWPIS Gordon MacLelland discusses the challenges, and gives you some helpful tips and strategies that you can use on a regular basis to ensure your relationship with parents is a winning one.

In 'Engage' we look at defining 'Parental Engagement' and what that means for us, we discuss the positives and challenges of sporting parents and how our own beliefs and attitudes can influence our behaviours. Setting the tone as a coach is vital and we provide some easy wins in building those positive relationships, investigate the importance of quality communication and how the setting of the environment around our athletes can have such a positive impact on all parties.

In this course there is a variety of media and we hope that it provides a range of tasks and strategies that allow all who complete the course to have practical things that they can use immediately in their role as a coach.