Assessing your Current Policies and Procedures
In order to create concrete and detailed Policies and Procedures at your Youth-Serving Organization (YSO), it is necessary to analyze what policies…
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Home / Code of Conduct / Writing a Code of Conduct: Additional Risk Areas
Your Code of Conduct will be unique to your organization, based on your size, purpose, location, staffing, ages served, additional vulnerabilities of children and youth served, and many other variables. You should consider all of these variables as you create or adapt your Code of Conduct.
For instance, a large youth-serving organization that hosts all activities on-site may have as a part of its Code of Conduct:
(Name of Organization) does not expect that staff will share their personal contact information with members. In the event that cell phone numbers need to be shared to ensure communication during a field trip or other event, cell phones are available from the Executive Director. Note that all communication should be program-related. On the rare occasions where staff members share personal contact information with a member or parent, a supervisor must be notified. Please see the “Cell Phone Policy” in Employee Handbook.
On the other hand, a mentoring organization in which frequent personal communication between mentor and mentee is expected would have a different guideline on sharing personal information. In both cases, the expectation is set that there are appropriate and inappropriate ways to communicate with youth, they are clearly spelled out, and they’re shared widely.
Here are some additional circumstances to consider:
Policies & Procedures
In order to create concrete and detailed Policies and Procedures at your Youth-Serving Organization (YSO), it is necessary to analyze what policies…
Reporting
Who Are Mandated Reporters? Massachusetts law defines a number of professionals as mandated reporters (for the full list, see MGL Chapter 119,…
Reporting
You can help protect the children you serve by maintaining an environment that prioritizes both preventing child abuse before it occurs and—since…
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…
Screening & Hiring
Criminal and sexual offense records checks are only part of the process of screening out individuals with the potential to harm children and youth….
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…
Screening & Hiring
State and federal laws and regulations require specific types of screening and background checks—particularly criminal and sexual offense records…
Monitoring Behavior
Safety: The Most Critical Conversation It’s essential that your staff can easily discern inappropriate behavior and harmful actions. That’s…
Screening & Hiring
Your Youth-Serving Organization (YSO) should create protocols for the application, interviewing, and screening process. Each step of the process…
Training
Training should be used to increase knowledge and awareness of child abuse prevention, to teach staff about responding to children who disclose…
Customized child sexual abuse prevention guidelines to meet the unique needs of any organization that serves children.
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