This week, Americans celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. It is easy to treat July 4th as a celebration of a single dramatic moment, a group of men signing a document and changing history. But the more instructive story is what happened…
Most youth-serving organizations have a supervision policy. Far fewer have a supervision system — a structure that actually generates information about what staff are doing, gets that information to someone with authority to act on it, and creates a record of what the organization did in response….
You built your program to be a place where children thrive. Your staff show up every day because they care about kids. None of that protects you from one of the hardest realities in youth program work: children sometimes harm other children, and the conditions…
Nothing tests an organization’s commitment to child protection like an allegation against its most trusted, most popular, most beloved staff member. The youth pastor who built the program from the ground up. The coach who took the team to state championships. The teacher every parent…
Summer programming season approaches fast, and with it comes an influx of new staff, expanded activities, and extended hours of direct contact between adults and children. For youth-serving organizations, summer represents both an extraordinary opportunity to serve young people and a period of heightened vulnerability….
Creating child protection policies is a significant milestone for youth serving organizations (YSO). But writing effective policies is just the beginning. The real challenge—and the real opportunity—lies in ensuring your child protection policy remains a living, breathing part of your organizational culture rather…
Despite the lessons about child protection policies provided by multiple highly-publicized sex abuse and safeguarding scandals, why do so many organizations that serve children, youth, and vulnerable adults still fall prey to the fast-talking, dynamic predator? Even after task forces and special commissions push for…
One of the difficulties in fashioning child protection policies is that there is little evidence about what actually works. We can reason backward from incidents, arguing that closing a loophole that a particular abuser exploited will prevent abuse in the future. That backward-looking reasoning, however, is simplistic and…
The first step in crafting solid child protection policies is knowing the standards in your field. We lawyers call it the “standard of care,” a term that means the policies and procedures that youth-serving organizations (YSOs) similar to yours follow in your area. Camping programs,…
A recent lawsuit offers some important lessons in child protection policies for youth-serving organizations (YSOs). A school resource officer (SRO) has filed suit in Savannah, Georgia, alleging that his supervisors retaliated against him for reporting allegations by two high school students that another SRO had sexually abused…
Having a claim that a child has been injured in your program is every youth organization’s worst nightmare. Fortunately, you can start developing steps in your child protection policy that will help you be better prepared to deal with such a claim. By planning ahead,…
The beginning of a new year is a traditional time to make new plans. For youth organizations, it is also a good time to take a close look at child protection policies to determine which ones to keep or change going forward. Not only will…