What are Policies and Procedures?
Policies and Procedures are an essential backbone of your prevention strategy at your Youth-Serving Organization (YSO), providing an overarching…
Home / Safe Environments / 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 organization, you may employ professional transportation companies to transport your students or clients on a daily basis. Or you may purchase your own vehicle(s) and hire one or more drivers. Alternatively, depending on your size or the nature of your services, you may rely on supervisors, employees, volunteers, or parents to transport children and youth in their personal vehicles. Each of these situations carries the potential for inappropriate contact with the children/youth being transported. Although larger organizations such as public schools are subject to regulatory requirements for the screening and hiring of drivers, many others are not.
Children and youth are and have been vulnerable to sexual maltreatment while being transported as part of an organization’s program. Drivers are also susceptible to false allegations when alone with a child being transported. For these reasons, you’ll need to consider your transportation policies. If your organization provides transportation under any circumstances, you should define in your policies who is responsible for transporting youth to and from regular activities and special events. The opportunities for drivers to be alone in a vehicle with a child/youth who is not their own should be minimized.
Some questions to consider as you define your transportation policies:
Safe Kids Thrive recommends the following best practices when it comes to transporting children/youth:
Policies & Procedures
Policies and Procedures are an essential backbone of your prevention strategy at your Youth-Serving Organization (YSO), providing an overarching…
Code of Conduct
Along with guiding appropriate behavior, your Code of Conduct should include a clear description of the lines of communication and reporting…
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…
Monitoring Behavior
Protocols should be developed in order to inform staff and volunteers about supervision, communication, and reporting procedures at your…
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…
Sustainability
Long-term organizational change is a process of continuous review, evaluation, and communication. It includes regularly examining what is working…
Sustainability
Depending on the size of your youth-serving organization, the data you’ll need to collect and analyze—or even simply summarize—could be…
Training
Effective abuse prevention training provides learners with new information, knowledge, and skills. Your leadership is critical to the ways in which…
Reporting
The “Protective Intake Policy” framework was designed “to clearly articulate a primary and immediate focus on child safety in screening and…
Policies & Procedures
Sample Self-Audit Form for YSOs You can use the following “Self-Audit” form to take an inventory of your youth-serving organization’s abuse…
Customized child sexual abuse prevention guidelines to meet the unique needs of any organization that serves children.
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