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…
Home / Policies & Procedures / Continuous Improvement of Your Policies and Procedures
Your Policies and Procedures must be continuously referred to throughout the year. At a minimum, an annual review of all policies and procedures should be conducted as well as a comprehensive assessment every three years. Ongoing consideration and revision guarantee that your policies are up to date with the broader circumstances in and outside of your Youth-Serving Organization (YSO).
Policies and Procedures remain effective when organizations:
Communicate your policies and protocols to all stakeholders, including parents. Policies and Procedures provide a means of expressing, in a public way, your organization’s ongoing pledge to keep kids safe from harm. All stakeholders, including parents and your community are made aware of the concrete steps your organization plans to take to protect children from harm.
Form community partnerships with local organizations to improve your child abuse prevention plans at your organization. Stakeholders include organizations providing similar services, child welfare agencies, and law enforcement. Any entity that works on behalf of the safety and security of children can be considered an important stakeholder with whom to collaborate on efforts.
Ensure staff and volunteers adhere to internal and external communication protocols when there is a suspected case of abuse. All staff and volunteers must be aware of their duties to report suspicions of abuse and neglect in a prompt manner. The names, contact information, and roles of staff who are designated to file reports are known to all.
Conduct an annual review and update of your policies, including Code of Conduct, Screening and Hiring, Reporting, Safe Environments, and Training. Continuous assessment of your current policies and procedures is necessary to remain effective. Leadership must coordinate these efforts and review the findings with all staff and volunteers.
Run a comprehensive assessment of your child abuse prevention plan every three years and include interviews with all stakeholders. In order to remain sustainable, your child abuse prevention plan must be continuously reviewed and revised. Ongoing communication with and feedback from stakeholders is crucial to keeping them engaged in your organization’s child safety plans and initiatives.
Your Policies and Procedures are the backbone of the initiatives to protect kids from sexual abuse. Your policies must be continuously referred and adhered to and reviewed to ensure they are up to date and effective at protecting kids.
Code of Conduct
Your Code of Ethics helps to guide the behavior and decision-making of your staff, volunteers, and participants by clarifying the standards and…
Screening & Hiring
Certain organizations, such as public schools and licensed childcare programs, must also query national criminal record and fingerprint-based…
Safe Environments
Ensuring a safe environment for children includes targeting the five major areas of safety: visibility, access, supervision and communication,…
Code of Conduct
Your Code of Conduct will be unique to your organization, based on your size, purpose, location, staffing, ages served, additional vulnerabilities…
Sustainability
Long-term organizational change is a process of continuous review, evaluation, and communication. It includes regularly examining what is working…
Screening & Hiring
One way you can help prevent child sexual abuse within your organization is by screening out those at risk to cause harm—before they are hired …
Reporting
Staff and volunteers should have a detailed understanding of their responsibility to report child abuse and neglect. At your YSO (Youth-Serving…
Screening & Hiring
To strengthen your screening and hiring process, you can use the questions in Thinking About Risk to make decisions about what additional background…
Code of Conduct
Once your Code of Conduct is in place, it’s important to implement it through training and by disseminating the information widely, in a variety…
Code of Conduct
Your Code of Conduct should cultivate standards of behavior for staff and volunteers at your Youth-Serving Organization (YSO) which prioritize child…
Customized child sexual abuse prevention guidelines to meet the unique needs of any organization that serves children.
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