Sustaining the Monitoring Behavior Protocol
Develop a culture of child safety at your Youth-Serving Organization (YSO) using your Monitoring Behavior protocol that includes leadership-driven…
Home / Reporting / Building a Culture of Prevention
You can help protect the children you serve by maintaining an environment that prioritizes both preventing child abuse before it occurs and—since abuse can still happen despite comprehensive prevention efforts—ensuring its detection at the earliest possible time. It’s essential that you build and sustain a culture in which any member of your staff will come forward with their concerns as quickly as possible if child/youth maltreatment is suspected, observed, or disclosed to them. All staff and volunteers need to know what to do to ensure children’s safety and well-being, to communicate the situation promptly and effectively to the person(s) identified in your Code of Conduct, and, if necessary, to report the circumstances to the Department of Children and Families (DCF) or to the police.
Early reporting is critical, and is the key to preventing further harm. That’s why you need to ensure that all of your employees and volunteers understand the basic issues of child abuse and neglect, and know how to recognize its signs and symptoms. They should be familiar with Massachusetts law, policies, and reporting procedures, along with the responsibilities of mandated reporters—including how, when, and to whom to make a report. On Safe Kids Thrive, you’ll find this information along with suggestions about how you can address these requirements within your organization, how to react to a child who discloses abuse, and the different circumstances your staff and volunteers may encounter that require reporting—including situations where a child or youth is being harmed or abused by another child or youth with problematic sexual behaviors.
Monitoring Behavior
Develop a culture of child safety at your Youth-Serving Organization (YSO) using your Monitoring Behavior protocol that includes leadership-driven…
Training
Ideally, all children/youth should receive training and education on issues of personal safety and abuse prevention. However, not every organization…
Reporting
Thinking of children or youth as capable of sexually abusing other children or youth can be difficult to consider and challenging to address. In…
Screening & Hiring
Additional screening and hiring measures should be implemented based on the specific needs, responsibilities, and risks of your Youth-Serving…
Screening & Hiring
Your Youth-Serving Organization’s (YSO’s) hiring process should include basic screening measures for potential staff and volunteers through…
Monitoring Behavior
Protocols should be developed in order to inform staff and volunteers about supervision, communication, and reporting procedures at your…
Screening & Hiring
Finding staff and volunteers you can trust to work with children includes additional steps beyond interviewing and checking references. …
Training
Parents and other caregivers need to receive, at a minimum, the same level of prevention education as their child/youth. Parents can be strong…
Policies & Procedures
Your Policies and Procedures must be adhered to by all staff and volunteers to maintain safety standards at your Youth-Serving Organization (YSO)….
Reporting
Mandated reporters are required to immediately report suspicions of child abuse and neglect to the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families…
Customized child sexual abuse prevention guidelines to meet the unique needs of any organization that serves children.
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