Elements of Prevention
Prevention Matters.
Child sexual abuse can be prevented. Learn how abuse occurs in YSOs and the individual organizational practices, policies, and procedural elements that YSOs can put in place to prevent abuse.
What I Should Know
About Mission Statements & Codes of Ethics
Keep in mind that a Code of Conduct is limited; it usually refers only to the most common and expected behaviors staff/volunteers may encounter each...
Safety: The Most Critical Conversation
Safety: The Most Critical Conversation It’s essential that your staff can easily discern inappropriate behavior and harmful actions. That’s...
Prevention Preparedness
Make Your Own Code of Conduct
Your Code of Conduct will provide your staff, volunteers, and others responsible for children and youth with very specific guidelines that will...
Develop a Monitoring Protocol for Staff
Your organization will need to be prepared to respond to interactions observed among youth and between employees/volunteers and youth. With a...
About Child Sexual Abuse Prevention
A comprehensive child abuse prevention framework is a proactive one.It aims to identify and prevent child abuse before it occurs, or ensures its earliest possible detection and reporting.
Our Safe Kids Thrive Framework
The elements of a proactive framework include:
- Policies and Procedures
- Screening, Hiring and Criminal Background Checks
- Codes of Conduct
- Monitoring Behavior
- Safe Physical Environments and Safe Technology
- Responding and Reporting
- Education and Training (for Adults and Children)
Safe Kids Thrive provides details on how these elements prevent child maltreatment, requirements and best practices that make them effective, strategies and tools to create and sustain them, and ways to maximize their effectiveness by tailoring them to meet the needs of Massachusetts’ youth-serving organizations of every type, size, and population.
Our framework is supported by additional elements that contribute to the effectiveness and sustained success of prevention, including:
- Child protection teams
- Community partnerships
- Measurement, analysis, self-audits, and organizational sustainment actions
- Communication
Additional Resources
25th Annual MASOC/MATSA Joint Conference
Preventing Sexual Violence Through Assessment, Treatment and Safe Management Save the Date: April 12-13, 2023 MASOC is the Massachusetts…
The National Symposium on Sexual Behavior of Youth
The National Symposium on Sexual Behavior of Youth: Be a Voice, Not an Echo Professionals and parents continue to use myths and misunderstandings…
The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children: Understanding and Responding to Victims
Every day, young people are deceived, manipulated, coerced, and forced into the commercial sex industry. This multibillion dollar industry is…
Build Your Prevention Toolkit
Customize child sexual abuse prevention guidelines to meet the unique needs of your organization.
- Research-based guidance
- Actionable prevention steps
- Comprehensive, customizable method
- Adaptable for YSOs of every kind
