Take Your Safety Temperature:
Strengthen Your Prevention Policies Today  

At the heart of every child-serving organization is a shared goal: to provide safe, nurturing spaces where children can learn, grow, and thrive. But safety doesn’t happen by chance, it happens by design. 

Preventing child sexual abuse requires more than good intentions. It demands clear, enforceable policies and procedures that outline conduct expectations and how we hire, report, train staff, and create safe environments. When thoughtfully designed and consistently implemented, these safeguards reduce risk and create a culture of prevention and trust. 

Core Components of Effective Prevention Policies 

To build a truly protective environment, prevention policies should be comprehensive, practical, and embedded into everyday operations. While every organization’s needs may differ, the following components are foundational: 

• Screening & Hiring: Your organization has an implemented policy to thoroughly screen all staff and volunteers to ensure they are safe and trustworthy to work with children. This system should include an interview, reference checks, and conducting initial and periodic criminal and sexual offense background checks.
  
• Code of Conduct: Your Code of Conduct should reflect the core standards and principles of your organization and its activities. It’s important to clearly define and provide examples of expected, appropriate behaviors and prohibited, harmful behaviors within your Code of Conduct. While the Code of Conduct cannot cover every potential situation, it should set a clear standard for behavior for adults and children at your organization.  
  
• Reporting: Organizational policy should outline clear steps that your staff and volunteers can take when reporting suspicions or incidents of abuse.  All adults are responsible for modeling appropriate behavior and reporting misconduct. 
  
• Safe Environments: Safe environments for children center on five key areas: visibility, access, supervision and communication, transportation, and technology. To account for all environments and interactions at your organization, the policy should also plan for higher-risk situations like off-site or overnight activities.  
  
• Training: A Training Policy will include action steps on how staff and volunteers will be trained on all policies and protocols both at the time of hire and annually. Additional training requirements should also include the signs and symptoms of abuse, and how to identify grooming behaviors in adults. Providing training in a variety of accessible formats will help increase awareness among adults and foster a culture of safety and prevention.   

Prevention is Not a One-Time Task- It’s an Ongoing Commitment 

In order to create sustainable policies and procedures, it is necessary to evaluate your protocols and update them to reflect changes inside and outside of your organization. It is best practice to review and update policies annually and conduct an in-depth analysis every three years.  

At a minimum, your organization should review and update its policies annually to ensure safety plans remain effective. Leadership must also share the results of these reviews with all staff and volunteers. In addition, conducting a thorough assessment of your child abuse prevention plan every three years encourages communication and feedback from various stakeholders. Keeping stakeholders involved helps maintain their commitment to your child safety efforts. 

When engaging families as part of your sustainability practice, it’s essential to frame prevention not as a reaction to fear, but as a proactive promise to protect every child in your care. Prevention is about building a culture where abuse is less likely to happen because boundaries are clear, adults are trained, and children are empowered. Communicating your organization’s commitment to prevention builds trust and sets your program apart for families. 

Use our Free Prevention Check: Take Your Organization’s Safety Temperature 

Looking for help reviewing or strengthening your child protection policies? Explore the Free Prevention Check to get started. The Prevention Check is like taking your organization’s safety temperature. It’s a quick, practical way to assess where you are and how well your policies are functioning not just on paper, but in practice. 

Use the Free Prevention Check as part of your organization’s sustainability practice. You can incorporate it periodically at staff meetings, in board reviews, or during program planning to spark conversation, identify gaps, and keep prevention efforts active and visible.  

For more information on how policies and procedures can help prevent child sexual abuse at your youth-serving organization, explore the other areas of Safe Kids Thrive.