Safe Environment Strategies: Transportation
Your youth-serving organization may provide transportation to children and youth—either on a regular or occasional basis. If you’re a larger…
Home / Sustainability / What is Sustainability?
Long-term organizational change is a process of continuous review, evaluation, and communication. It includes regularly examining what is working and what requires improvement at your Youth-Serving Organization (YSO).
At minimum, Sustainability includes:
An organizational culture focused on the shared responsibility of all staff and volunteers to ensure child safety and transform policy into practice. Leadership should continuously highlight the importance of staff and volunteers’ accountability to uphold a culture of child safety. In order to transform policy into practice, leadership must hold themselves accountable as well and set an example for the rest of the staff and volunteers.
Managing and monitoring ongoing implementation of child sexual abuse prevention plans at your organization. Examine plans to check if your organization is continuously applying these safety methods. Conduct audits and other evaluations to ensure your current child abuse prevention strategy is effective by addressing its strengths, challenges, and necessary adjustments.
Ongoing communication from leadership on the effort and commitment to keep kids safe. Your organization’s pledge to keep children safe should be clear for all staff and volunteers. Incorporate discussions on abuse prevention during regular supervision, staff meetings, and professional development days, and make certain that staff and volunteers feel comfortable raising any questions or concerns regarding child safety.
Consistent collaboration, and communication with staff, volunteers, community partners and other stakeholders. Your organization should partner with other community organizations in order to strengthen child abuse prevention efforts. Collaboration with partners and stakeholders should be built to increase education and communication between your organization and your community.
An annual review of all policies and procedures and a comprehensive review of your overall prevention efforts every three years. Annually audit your organization’s policies and procedures and update where needed to improve performance. Every three years, complete a comprehensive evaluation of all prevention practices at your organization and conduct interviews with all stakeholders to determine if policy revision, restructure, or clarification is needed.
In order to uphold your organization’s mission of child safety, sustainability efforts should be put in place. These should include consistent communication with and from leadership and collaboration with stakeholders. Policies and procedures should be reviewed regularly in order to confirm they are up to date and effective.
Safe Environments
Your youth-serving organization may provide transportation to children and youth—either on a regular or occasional basis. If you’re a larger…
Safe Environments
Ensuring a safe environment for children includes targeting the five major areas of safety: visibility, access, supervision and communication,…
Screening & Hiring
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Sustainability
Why Collect Data? “Mathematics” and “measurement” are words that send many of us scurrying for cover, but in the world of organizational…
Monitoring Behavior
Develop a culture of child safety at your Youth-Serving Organization (YSO) using your Monitoring Behavior protocol that includes leadership-driven…
Reporting
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Code of Conduct
Along with guiding appropriate behavior, your Code of Conduct should include a clear description of the lines of communication and reporting…
Screening & Hiring
Finding staff and volunteers you can trust to work with children includes additional steps beyond interviewing and checking references. …
Sustainability
Leadership at Youth-Serving Organizations (YSOs) should maintain regular communication on the culture of safety with staff, volunteers, parents, and…
Reporting
All staff must be aware of the warning signs and symptoms of child abuse and neglect, know how to respond appropriately, and report suspected cases…
Customized child sexual abuse prevention guidelines to meet the unique needs of any organization that serves children.
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