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…
Child sexual abuse is a difficult topic. If you find yourself triggered by any of the website’s content, please stop and take the time you need to talk with someone to get support. If you need help now, please contact one of these resources today.
Home / Safe Environments / Safe Environment Strategies: Supervision
Along with site safety, visibility issues, physical access, and security procedures, supervision is a critical aspect of creating and maintaining safe environments for children and youth. Adequate supervision of children and youth depends on vigilance: No child or youth in your organization’s care should be anywhere—at any time—without the knowledge of, or direct supervision by, a staff member or adult volunteer. Effective supervision always includes adult awareness of the child’s/youth’s whereabouts, having the child/youth within sight, and monitoring and/or participating in the child’s/youth’s activities and interactions. An efficient means for staff to communicate with one another is particularly important when your organization’s facilities are spread out in large spaces, are dispersed into separate rooms or multiple buildings, and/or when traveling off-site or during overnight trips.
Written policies and procedures for the supervision of children/youth during off-site activities may need to change with each off-site location. They should be reviewed with all staff, volunteers, parents, and children/youth when appropriate, with a special emphasis on anything that is unique to a particular setting.
Reporting
You can help protect the children you serve by maintaining an environment that prioritizes both preventing child abuse before it occurs and—since…
Policies & Procedures
Your Policies and Procedures must be continuously referred to throughout the year. At a minimum, an annual review of all policies and procedures…
Training
Training Employees/Staff/Leadership When it comes to training your employees, paid staff, managers, senior leaders, and board and governance…
Screening & Hiring
A personal interview provides an opportunity for you to meet applicants and determine if they are a good fit for your organization. It’s also a …
Screening & Hiring
Certain organizations, such as public schools and licensed childcare programs, must also query national criminal record and fingerprint-based…
Screening & Hiring
Finding and retaining a qualified and diverse workforce is one of the greatest challenges for youth-serving organizations like yours. Given the…
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
When it comes to training your volunteers, there is certain core content that is critical to include in a comprehensive training program to…
Policies & Procedures
No matter how large or small a youth-serving organization is, or what services it provides, every organization shares the desire to keep…
Code of Conduct
For your Youth-Serving Organization (YSO) to ensure the safety of the children it serves, there must be a set of principles to guide the environment…
Customized child sexual abuse prevention guidelines to meet the unique needs of any organization that serves children.
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