Protecting Youth from Abuse in Youth-Serving Organizations

As a Child Advocacy Center, we understand that preventative measures are a crucial part of a community’s response to child abuse. Child abuse prevention can take many forms including teaching children anatomically correct terms, educating teachers on warning signs of abuse, and helping caregivers have difficult conversations with their youth. Prevention measures also look like supporting youth-serving organizations in creating effective policies and procedures that reduce the risk of institutional child abuse. 

Youth-serving organizations are any organization that caters to their services to children and adolescents. These may include after school programs, summer camps, and local rec centers. To protect the youth they serve, organizations that cater to minors need to proactively create policies and procedures that aim to prevent and aid in response to child abuse.  Shira Berkovitz, a psychologist and attorney, created a list of ten policies that youth serving organizations should adopt in order to prevent child abuse. Berkovitz utilizes her own list within her work of preventing institutional child abuse in Jewish communities.  

1. Screen Prospective Employees/Volunteers

Abusers intentionally end up in youth serving organizations because of the easy and repeated access to children and the respect they receive as an authority figure. To prevent perpetrators from infiltrating a youth serving organization, it is crucial to implement policies laying out the process for applicant screenings. Screening job and volunteer applicants may involve criminal background check, sex offender registry check, internet searches, interviews, and calling references.  

2. Maximize Visibility

To limit opportunities for abuse during operation hours, organizations should be designed to maximize visibility. This may look like building design (glass walls, open layouts, well-lit spaces), but it also looks like designing policies that prevent adults from being alone with children. Shira Berkovitz recommends having two or more staff present for youth programming, locking the doors to unused rooms, and giving other staff or caregivers the option to observe and interrupt programming.  

3. Know All Participants

Registration for youth programming is essential for preventing internal and external abuse, as well as emergency preparedness. During registration, collect information about the child, any disabilities or allergies, adults approved for pick up, and emergency contact information. While this is not a complete list of important information, it can help us reduce the risk of harm to the child.  

4. Plan For Dismissals

The end of the day is often chaotic, especially when working with children. Dismissal protocols can help ensure that staff are passing the youth off to a trusted and safe adult. Important policies include requiring an adult to sign their child out for the day and requiring caregivers to give a list of people approved to pick their child up. These two guidelines ensure that the child is picked up by the correct adult, minimizing potential risk of abuse. 

5. Define Interaction Boundaries

Defining appropriate and inappropriate interactions helps bystanders identify potential child abuse. Perpetrators often test the tolerances of the child and bystanders through nonsexual/accidental touches or other behaviors that break boundaries but are not inherently harmful. If these interactions go unnoticed by others, the offender may gain the confidence to further push boundaries. Different interaction boundaries that should be enforced include defining appropriate and inappropriate touches, not spending time with youth outside of programming, and not connecting with youth via social media. 

When we define and explain interaction boundaries, bystanders become more likely to notice and report inappropriate behaviors. 

6. Maintain Policies Off-Premises

Staff members and volunteers need to maintain all organization policies when off-site and off-the-clock. These policies extend to field trips, mission trips, other events in the community, and when employees offer babysitting (each organization should determine whether this offer is allowed). Policies may include following the two-adult guidelines during transportation, receiving written parental consent for the trip, guidelines for bathroom breaks, and keeping emergency contact information readily available.  

7. Implement Extra Safety Precautions in High-Risk Venues

Child abuse can occur anywhere, but there are certain venues that pose additional risk factors. High-risk venues include any place in which children and adults are changing together. These venues include gyms, changing rooms, bathrooms, saunas, and swimming pools. Additional safety precautions may be necessary to prevent abuse in these high-risk locations. Policies may require additional adult supervisors, prohibiting nudity in public spaces, and designating private spaces for children’s use only. 

8. Emphasize Training

Training is crucial to ensuring that policies are understood and effectively implemented. Proper training and education for staff and volunteers should also include modeling safe behavior, recognize signs and precursors of abuse, and understand their responsibility as a reporter of child abuse. Often times, mandated reporters may not be aware of their responsibility to report or have worries about what happens after they report.  

It is also crucial to differentiate between child neglect and poverty to ensure that the proper resources are utilized to support children. When families are experiencing poverty, there may be unmet needs that an outside observer may look like child neglect. For example, a child showing up to programming in the middle of winter without a coat may come from a family that cannot afford a winter coat. Understanding the difference between neglect and poverty allows the organization to provide resources instead of punishment. For more information about this difference, please check the listed resources below.  

9. Develop Response Protocol

Policies around responding to abuse are just as important as policies aimed at preventing abuse. When reports of child abuse are made, people may become frantic and act on impulse. Providing a well-thought-out plan for addressing child abuse can help leaders make educated decisions that are trauma-informed and helpful for everyone involved. Policies for handling cases of abuse should address supporting the victim, preventing further abuse, reporting it to the authorities, and alerting the community. 

10. Protect From Known Risks

Finally, it is important to protect children from known risks. There may be individuals within the community that are known to be a risk to children. This includes individuals who have been convicted of child abuse, have pending allegations of abuse, or have engaged in concerning behaviors with no accusations.  

Conclusion  

Protecting youth from abuse in youth-serving organizations requires a multi-faceted approach, focused on prevention, awareness, and responsive measures. By implementing policies such as thorough screening of staff, maximizing visibility, and clearly defining interaction boundaries, organizations can create safer environments for children. Training staff, emphasizing clear response protocols, and maintaining safety standards in high-risk venues can further strengthen the protective framework. Ultimately, by adopting these strategies, youth-serving organizations play a crucial role in not only safeguarding children but also in fostering a community that actively works to prevent abuse and promote the well-being of its youth.