Promoting a Culture of Safety
Protocols should be developed in order to inform staff and volunteers about supervision, communication, and reporting procedures at your…
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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
Protocols should be developed in order to inform staff and volunteers about supervision, communication, and reporting procedures at your…
Code of Conduct
Your Code of Conduct should cultivate standards of behavior for staff and volunteers at your Youth-Serving Organization (YSO) which prioritize child…
Safe Environments
Creating a safe environment starts with assessing your youth-serving organization’s situation and the physical spaces you use for programming and…
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)….
Code of Conduct
Leadership at your Youth-Serving Organization (YSO) should implement the Code of Conduct by including it in many aspects of the organization. The…
Training
Your organization has the opportunity to support and empower young people to feel confident, protected, and safe in their homes and communities….
Reporting
DCF: What Happens When a Report Is Made? The “Protective Intake Policy” framework was designed “to clearly articulate a primary and…
Reporting
Recognizing Abuse & Neglect The minimum required safety elements for you to prepare leadership, staff, and volunteers to recognize, respond…
Training
The approaches in the chart below can provide frameworks that make your organization most effective when training adults and/or children/youth….
Sustainability
Community interaction and involvement is important in maintaining a culture of safety surrounding your Youth-Serving Organization (YSO). In order to…
Customized child sexual abuse prevention guidelines to meet the unique needs of any organization that serves children.
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