Sustaining Systemic Change in the Organization
Common Implementation Roadblocks Natural conflicts exist between strategy and culture. These conflicts—if left unaddressed— predict that…
Home / Screening & Hiring / Conduct a Risk Assessment
To strengthen your screening and hiring process, you can use the questions in Thinking About Risk to make decisions about what additional background screening practices you will utilize. Whether performed formally by an HR office, or with pencil and paper by a small business owner, these questions are designed to help you carefully examine the types of risk individuals in positions of trust with children may pose—focusing on opportunities for harm. The questions will help you think about your physical setting; the ages and vulnerabilities of the children/youth you serve; an applicant’s potential contact with the child/youth; the nature, duration, and frequency of that contact; and the level of supervision and monitoring of that contact. Based on the results of this analysis, you may need to pursue further screening.
Based on this assessment, positions should be assigned a risk designation:
These designations should correlate with your organization’s requirement for specific screening protocols, and should be indicated in your job descriptions. According to best practices, the higher the risk to children, the more in-depth the screening protocol for a position should be.
A screening protocol addressing multiple levels of risk applies to larger organizations with sufficient numbers of employees and volunteers serving in different functions, and with varying levels of interaction with children and youth. It’s not uncommon for organizations like this to pay for the services of a commercial vendor to conduct these types of multi-level background checks—from standard Massachusetts criminal records checks (CORI/SORI) to national, multi-state (especially those states in which the applicant has worked or volunteered previously), international, and Interpol criminal and sexual offense records searches.
For smaller YSOs and businesses with few employees or volunteers, where a manager or supervisor is responsible for screening and hiring applicants, and the risk is determined to be equivalent or level across positions in the organization, the policy could be equal treatment of all applicants, with a standard screening protocol that applies to applicants for all positions interacting with children and youth.
Sustainability
Common Implementation Roadblocks Natural conflicts exist between strategy and culture. These conflicts—if left unaddressed— predict that…
Reporting
Effective reporting structures rely on staff and volunteers’ recognition of signs and symptoms of abuse and neglect. The Youth-Serving…
Policies & Procedures
Whether your organization is evaluating an existing policy or creating a new one, we’ve provided a convenient Child Sexual Abuse Prevention (CSA)…
Training
Once you have identified your training expectations and standards and have researched current and available local and national training, explore…
Screening & Hiring
To determine what screening tools are most appropriate to use for a particular position and to ensure consistency in your screening protocols, we…
Reporting
When a member of your staff suspects that a child is being abused and/or neglected, they are required to immediately call your local Department of…
Training
Training should be used to increase knowledge and awareness of child abuse prevention, to teach staff about responding to children who disclose…
Screening & Hiring
Here’s how you can develop a screening policy that fits your organization’s role, size, and resources: Know the screening rules and…
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…
Screening & Hiring
If a criminal record is discovered, its existence alone does not necessarily automatically disqualify a candidate from employment or volunteer…
Customized child sexual abuse prevention guidelines to meet the unique needs of any organization that serves children.
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.