Safe Environment Strategies: Access
Safe Environment Strategies: Access Complementing the physical aspects of safety are the procedural aspects of safety and security, and how…
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To protect the children/youth you serve, your organization needs a comprehensive framework: a set of abuse prevention policies and procedures, enhanced screening and hiring practices, safe physical environment and safe technology standards, codes of conduct, and reporting requirements. But implementing these safety elements and announcing that they are in effect isn’t enough. That is why Safe Kids Thrive recommends that you also provide some form of initial and periodic follow-up training on your prevention strategies for staff and volunteers (and possibly children/youth) at all levels.
To help you get started, we’ve created best practice guidelines so your leadership can think about the elements of effective workplace training programs, and how to adapt and integrate training programs into your environment, culture, and circumstances.
Here’s a set of minimum required safety standards that your organization should consider when thinking about training your staff and volunteers:
When selecting or designing a training program, it’s important to build or to look for products that reflect good teaching and learning practices, and offer participatory, interactive problem-based learning experiences that actively engage the learner. Effective programs present information from a positive viewpoint, encouraging healthy behavior rather than forbidding poor behavior, help participants to feel responsible for dealing with the problem, and teach and encourage intervention behaviors. They sometimes even use role-playing to help trainees find comfortable and appropriate ways to express their discomfort with another’s behavior, or to come forward and report suspected child maltreatment.
Whether your organization is large or small, one of the best ways to get started is to seek out and consult with local area social service providers like the Department of Children and Families, the regional Child Advocacy Centers, the Children’s Trust, the Office of the Child Advocate and others included in our Resources. These agencies and others can provide a wealth of local expertise about training options, informational materials, and curricula that have demonstrated effectiveness—and can help save a lot of time as you formulate a training strategy that’s right for your organization.
Safe Environments
Safe Environment Strategies: Access Complementing the physical aspects of safety are the procedural aspects of safety and security, and how…
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…
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…
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…
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.
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
Start with Basic Screening It is very important that all applicants who provide direct services and who are seeking positions of trust—either…
Training
Ideally, all children/youth should receive training and education on issues of personal safety and abuse prevention. However, not every organization…
Sustainability
In order to uphold a culture of safety at your Youth-Serving Organization (YSO), communication between leadership, staff and volunteers must focus…
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…
Customized child sexual abuse prevention guidelines to meet the unique needs of any organization that serves children.
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