What is Family Connect?

Family Connect is our in-house system for parental oversight of child interactions across the Rookie Me tech ecosystem.

Do I need to use Family Connect?

Short answer: Yes—if your child is under 16, we strongly recommend it.

Family Connect exists to help protect young people online and to support families.

*This is particularly relevant in Australia, where expectations for digital platforms around child safety have been tightened.

Why Family Connect matters (in Australia)

Australia’s Federal Government has made it clear that children’s safety online is a shared responsibility—not just for social media companies, but for any digital platform that enables communication, profiles, or community interaction involving minors.

Recent reforms under the Online Safety Act, overseen by the eSafety Commissioner, place stronger expectations on platforms to:

Protect children from harm and inappropriate contact
Ensure age-appropriate safeguards are in place
Give parents and guardians meaningful oversight

Family Connect is Rookie Me’s way of meeting—and going beyond—these expectations.

What Family Connect does for guardians

By linking a child’s profile to a guardian account, Family Connect:

Confirms who is responsible for a child’s participation
Enables appropriate supervision and transparency
Helps Rookie Me respond quickly if safety issues arise
Aligns with national child-safety and online-protection standards

This isn’t about monitoring every interaction—it’s about creating a safer, accountable environment for young athletes, officials, and families.

Why this is becoming the norm

Across Australia (and internationally), governments are signalling that unlinked, unsupervised child accounts are no longer acceptable on platforms that resemble social or community networks.

Family Connect helps ensure:

Rookie Me remains compliant with current and future regulation
Families are supported, not excluded, from digital sport communities
Children can participate confidently and safely

Our commitment

Rookie Me Connect is built for community sport. Family Connect reflects our belief that child safety, family involvement, and digital innovation must go hand-in-hand.

If your child is under 16, using Family Connect isn’t just recommended—it’s the safest way to ensure they can enjoy the platform as intended.

What does it do?

A Family is a collection of users, with one or more Guardians and one or more Children. This connection between these users enables Guardians to:

View or participate in any Team or communication that their Children are involved in - any direct message to a Child account will automatically include the relevant Guardian(s).
Enable or disable functionality of Children with fine-grained controls.
View and RSVP to Events that the Child has been invited to (every upcoming Game, weekly training etc)
Get notified whenever there is a new Team update
Check In and Check Out of Events
View Rookie Me Testing Event Results of Children
Recover lost accounts of Children
Act on behalf of the Child within Teams

What does it cost?

Family Connect is provided to families at no charge. We will keep building on our core product offering and there may be the option to purchase additional upgrades in future.

How do I get started?

The easiest way to get started is to:

Download Rookie Me Connect from the App Store (iOS) or the Play Store (Android)
Create an account and log in (you will need a valid email address)
Tap Account > Family Connect and Create Family

After your Family has been created, you can add one or more Children, and also invite other Guardians to ensure everyone is kept up to date!

My child has already signed up, what do I do?

As a Guardian, you should create your own account under your own name, with your own email address, and use Family Connect to create a family and invite your Child to join.

Coming soon: a Child user will be able to request their guardian(s) create a family.

I accidentally created my account with my child's name, how do I fix this?

If you accidentally set up an account using your email address but your Child's name. This process will separate the identities by creating a new Family Group, giving you a Guardian profile and moving the details below into a dedicated Child account.

Follow the on-screen instructions to split your account.

My child doesn't have an email address, can I still use Rookie Me Connect?

Yes! By using something called Sub-accounts, you can have the single login / email address from the Parent used by multiple children.

If you want your Child to log in by themselves, you can set a password on the Sub-account and share this with your Child.

When your Child gets their own email address in future, you can simply change the Sub-account email to the Child's email address, this will send a verification email to the Child's email address and allow them to merge accounts, whilst still retaining access to all Family Connect resources.

What's a Sub-account and how do they work?

Family Connect Sub-accounts are simply accounts for Children that have been setup directly by Guardians.

By leveraging a technology called Subaddressing, this essentially enables multiple users to sign in with the same email address and - on supported mail clients (e.g. Google, Outlook, Yahoo) - allows the Guardian to receive the emails that are sent to the Child.

Subaddressing Example:

Tim wants to sign up with their real address: footydad@rookieme.com

Tim wants to add his son, Isaac, but Isaac does not have his own email address

Using Family Connect, Tim adds Isaac to his Family, and specifies that Isaac does not have an email address. This automatically creates an account for Isaac, pointing to a Subaddressing email address: footydad+isaac@rookieme.com

This is all handled automatically when adding Children to your family.

Please note: while Sub-accounts will work for all email addresses, Subaddressing is only supported by some mailbox providers and is not supported when a user logs in via Apple. This simply means that emails sent to Subaddresses might be undeliverable.

My child was setup with a subaccount, but now they want to use their own email to login. What do I do?

From within the Family Connect management screen (on Rookie Me Connect or Rookie Me Hub), simply change the Sub-account email to the Child's email address, this will send a verification email to the Child's email address and allow them to merge accounts, whilst still retaining access to all Family Connect resources.

I don't want my child to have access to some features app, can I restrict what they are able to do?

Simply select your Child from the Family Connect screen and toggle the Access switches to enable / disable specific features.

If you don't want your Child to have access to the app at all, and they are using a Sub-account, simply change their password to something they won't guess. This can be achieved through the Family Connect management screen.

Coming Soon: specify restrictions per team

I have more than one child, will Family Connect still work for me?

Yes! Family Connect is designed to work with families of up to 10 members. The composition could be 1 Child, 9 Guardians or 9 Children, 1 Guardian, or anywhere in between.

How can I allow my spouse / other adult family members to access Family Connect?

The easiest way to enable other users access to your family is to ask your family member to follow Download the Rookie Me Connect app and register

At this stage, on your device in Rookie Me Connect > Family Connect, you can click the plus button (top right) and tap "Add Parent / Guardian".

This will show a QR code that your family member can scan to join.

Finally, tap "Pending Family" to approve their request and designate them a role.

My child plays for multiple teams, can I access all the teams from Family Connect?

Yes! When one of your children is on one or more teams, the teams are listed on that Child's page. If you would like to join their team as a Guardian, simply click the three dots next to the team name and click Join Team as Guardian

Please note: if your Child is in a Pending state, you will still be able to join, but will not be able to see the team until your Child has been approved by the team staff.

My child has attended one or more Rookie Me Testing events, how do I see their testing results?

Once you or your child has followed the steps to accept the testing results, you can see results for family members on your Family Calendar:

Rookie Me Connect via the Events tab at the bottom of the screen

Rookie Me Hub via this direct link: https://hub.rookieme.com/family/events

Please note, your testing events may only be visible in the Past events tab; and your testing results may take up to 48 hours from the end of a testing event to appear.

If you are logged in as the person with testing results, you can view them quickly:

Rookie Me Connect via My Testing Results on the Account tab at the bottom of the screen

I want to see all the events for my whole Family Calendar in one spot, where can I see this?

This is possible on two of our platforms:

Rookie Me Connect via the Events tab at the bottom of the screen

Rookie Me Hub via this direct link: https://hub.rookieme.com/family/events

I want to set up a chat channel with just my family members, how do I do this?

This feature is coming soon! Keep an eye on your Inbox for a new channel with the name of your Family.

I want to add my Family Calendar to my iPhone Calendar / Google Calendar / another third-party provider, how do I do this?

This feature is coming soon! Keep an eye on your Family Calendar for "Subscribe using my calendar app" button.

By creating a Family Connect Account, parents and guardians can have access to what their child sees on Rookie Me Connect. This child safety initiative by Rookie Me can aid parents and guardians to mitigate their child from harm.