What is a Code of Conduct?
Your Code of Conduct is an essential tool to help you ensure the safety of the children and youth in your care, and prevent child sexual abuse.
Home / Code of Conduct / Writing a Code of Conduct: Code of Ethics
Your Code of Ethics helps to guide the behavior and decision-making of your staff, volunteers, and participants by clarifying the standards and principles you pledge to uphold. It can be as simple or as complicated as you choose.
Your Code of Ethics should provide a philosophy by which decisions can be made, rather than specific do’s and don’ts. If, for example, your organization is “committed to providing children and youth with a safe and welcoming opportunity to gain soccer skills, participate on a team, and experience healthy competition,” your staff can use those guidelines to make decisions about things like entering a highly competitive tournament, playing in unsafe weather, or dealing with a bullying situation.
As you write your Code of Ethics:
For example, a sports league might state, “We seek above all else to produce teams that win championships at every level,” or “We seek to provide a fun, low-stress, and inclusive environment.” Either one of these statements could give coaches a great deal of guidance on their decision making about team formation, practice scheduling, etc.
However, neither of these includes a commitment to keeping participants safe from sexual abuse. The statement “We seek to produce teams that win championships at every level while ensuring that participants are safe from abuse, bullying, and other harm” provides coaches, parents, and youth with a standard far more important than winning games.
Real-world example:
Jorge was hired as a basketball coach in September. He was trained on both the Code of Ethics and the Code of Conduct for the organization. One month into the season, a parent approached him, asking if her child could join the team. She told him that the child had autism and loved basketball. However, he was not good at following rules. Jorge did not know what the league’s policy was on inclusion. However, the Code of Ethics for the organization that he had laminated to the clipboard he used at each practice stated, “The goal of the **** Basketball League is to teach young people the value of teamwork, of supporting one another, and of hard work.” From this, Jorge construed that the League would support him in taking this youth onto his team.
Code of Conduct
Your Code of Conduct is an essential tool to help you ensure the safety of the children and youth in your care, and prevent child sexual abuse.
Screening & Hiring
Certain organizations, such as public schools and licensed childcare programs, must also query national criminal record and fingerprint-based…
Reporting
Sometimes, a child/youth might self-disclose an abusive situation to an adult in your organization. These disclosures can be direct, where the child…
Policies & Procedures
Sample Self-Audit Form for YSOs You can use the following “Self-Audit” form to take an inventory of your youth-serving organization’s abuse…
Code of Conduct
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…
Safe Environments
In the past, youth-serving organizations needed to worry about safety only within the physical environment—the building(s) where their services…
Sustainability
Leadership at Youth-Serving Organizations (YSOs) should maintain regular communication on the culture of safety with staff, volunteers, parents, and…
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…
Screening & Hiring
State and federal laws and regulations require specific types of screening and background checks—particularly criminal and sexual offense records…
Training
A Model for Evaluation: Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Training Every training course needs a method of collecting feedback to ensure a course is…
Customized child sexual abuse prevention guidelines to meet the unique needs of any organization that serves children.
Safe Kids Thrive is managed by the Children's Trust of Massachusetts
Learning Center Registration
Sign up for an account and start your learning experience.
Free Online Assessment
Let us help you find out where to start.