The last couple of days, I’ve been talking about creating safe environments within your children’s ministry. It’s too important to “wing it” or think that the chances of something happening are slim, so it’s not worth getting so particular about everything.
Today I simply wanted to introduce a couple of non-negotiables. Hopefully, if you read this, you’re already doing these things. I’d love to hear back from some of you and know what your non-negotiatbles are.
- Background check and screen all workers – This doesn’t matter if they work every week, once a month or two times a year. If they have access to kids, they need to go through the process. What about having parents come in and help? This is an area where some people fudge a little. I’m obstinate about this. If they’re going to be in the classroom, background check them and screen them. Period. Isn’t that expensive? Yes. Is it worth it? Yes. There are several companies that offer legittimate background checks for about $7-12 per person and it takes about a day to get the results. You’ll want to make sure it does an identity check (be sure to take a look at their photo ID to make sure they are who they say they are), a criminal background check and a national sex-offenders check. These are usually all included in what I mentioned above. This effort shows due dilligence. You can spend upwards of $100 per check if you run checks on every county they’ve ever lived in. You have to decided if going to that level is worth it. Being this far South in Texas, we’ve run background checks on workers who grew up in Mexico and other countries. It’s more expensive, but it’s worth it. Just make sure they’re going to commit to serving before you drop $100 on their search. Screen then as well. Have them fill out an application, call their references and spend at least 15-20 minutes talking to them. This process will weed out most people who would bring harm to the kids in your ministry… just do it.
- Never be alone with a child… ever – This has been my cardinal rule for well over a decade. It’s for the protection of the church, child and worker. Always at least two adults. If you have to speak to a child alone, pull them aside where you are in eyeshot of at least one other adult. If you need to help a child in the bathroom, be sure there is a set of eyes on you, watching you. If only one adult shows up to help, close the room. It is NOT SAFE. You have to determine what age the other worker needs to be… 18 or 16 is probably a safe range. Remember, you don’t know everything about every one of your workers. They’re not gong to do something if they know they are always going to be in the presence of another worker. Also, if a child makes an accusation, which they do from time to time, having another worker provides a witness. Don’t fudge on this. This rule is why we always require 3 workers in a room. One can run out and get help or supplies still leaving two in the room. Also, if you have a no-show, you still have two… which means you can still open the room.
- Bathroom policy – Some of this sounds sexist, but I don’t make apologies on this either. Only women are allowed to change diapers or help children go to the bathroom. When it comes to elementary aged kids, men or women have no business going into the bathroom, unless of an accident. If that’s the case, only women go in and help. Men (at least two) can stand in the hallway as they wait for kids to finish up. Why the women only rule? It’s purely statistical. Child molesters are statistically more likely to be a male compared to females. If we simple make this a rule, we eliminate the majority of the threat, especially since it is around the bathroom times that molestation happens.
- Appropriate touch – I hate that we live in this day and time where we constantly have to second guess and be so very specific on how we make contact, but it is the situation we are in. We don’t give kids front facing body contact hugs… stick with side hugs. Fist bumps and high fives are appropriate for most contact. A rule I was given years ago was to never touch a child where a one-piece bathing suit would cover up. It’s a pretty good general rule of thumb. Obviously, we hold babies and comfort them when they need it, but when it comes to toddler and preschool ages, we don’t allow lap-sitting. We can be comforting and sit beside them and even put an arm around their shoulder to comfort… but we keep them off our laps. That may seem extreme, but once again, there are many parents who are very uncomfortable with their child sitting on someone else’s lap.
Those are just a handful of my non-negotiable rule. What about you? Do you have some that I didn’t mention here?
GREAT post! I agree that it is so important to be proactive in protecting the kids and the volunteers. We do have all of these policies firmly established. One that we added recently is our social media policy, which prohibits any volunteer or kidmin leader from having ANY private contact with a kid from the kidmin. We do not allow our volunteers/leaders to be “friends” with kids on twitter, facebook, instagram, etc. We do not allow them to text each other, call each other, email each other, or write private letters in the mail (we do allow and encourage volunteers to send “We Miss You” POSTCARDS to kids in the mail!). This might sound drastic to some, but merely a few months after we created this policy, our church went through a terrible experience where a young man (in his 20s) was sending inappropriate text messages to a teen from the youth group, and we were able to reinforce the fact that we already have policies in place that do not allow any kind of private communication between adults and kids.
We have very similar policies in place and feel that they have been sufficient, but recently I’ve been thinking about adding a new policy regarding facebook. Often times during events or promotions we’ll have photographers take pictures of the kids participating in the various activities. We’ve always had a release of photo clause on event sign up forms and never used photos with names in the promo pieces. More recently picture are popping up on facebook and we asked our photogs to only post photos in a private group. That seemed to work well until someone saw a photo of a friend’s child and tagged their child. And parents are not ok with their kids photo popping up on facebook with their name tagged – nor should they be. I love the energy and excitement that FB photos can help to bring to a ministry, but don’t want to compromise the security of families. So as I’m contemplating what a reasonable policy would be, I’d love to get some input as far as what other folks are doing.