About This Blog
Youth-serving organizations take on a serious responsibility when they open their doors to children and other vulnerable people. Fulfilling that responsibility well requires two things working together: a safety culture strong enough to prevent harm, and independent investigations credible enough to find the truth when someone alleges mistreatment.
Youth Services Law covers both. Posts examine the legal landscape, practical decisions, and organizational choices that shape how schools, camps, churches, colleges, faith-based groups, and community organizations protect the people in their care and respond when something goes wrong. The goal is the same in every post: precise, useful guidance for child protection and investigations.
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Featured Post
July 16, 2026
On July 17, 1938, pilot Douglas Corrigan filed a flight plan from Brooklyn to California and landed in Dublin, Ireland twenty-eight hours later. He blamed a faulty compass. Corrigan’s story earned him the nickname "Wrong Way Corrigan" and a permanent place in aviation folklore. A...
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On July 17, 1938, pilot Douglas Corrigan filed a flight plan from Brooklyn to California and landed in Dublin, Ireland twenty-eight hours later. He blamed a faulty compass. Corrigan’s story earned him the nickname “Wrong Way Corrigan” and a permanent place in aviation folklore. A youth-serving organization does not get that kind of forgiveness. When a program…
Debbie Ausburn and Tom Rawlings are leading a free webinar on July 22 that walks youth-serving organizations through building a child protection policy that works in real life, not just one that reads well in a binder. The session runs 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. ET through Early Childhood Investigations Webinars. Register in advance; the webinar…
My June 30 post covered what courts require when organizations supervise staff. This post covers the other half of the supervision picture: what courts require when organizations supervise the children in their programs. The legal standard is less obvious than most administrators assume. Furthermore, a 2024 meta-analysis on overparenting and a growing body of developmental psychology research give YSOs a…
The Founders built something that has lasted 250 years not because they got everything right the first time, but because they encoded principles, designed a system that could evolve, and then did the unglamorous work of making it function. I have spent decades advising and defending youth-serving organizations, and I see the same three failure…
Tom Rawlings and I recorded a six-part podcast series for YSO Academy, and all six episodes are now available. The series is called “Cultivating a Culture of Safety.” If you advise youth-serving organizations, or if you are an administrator working through child protection policy development, this series covers the full process. The six episodes run…
When a church in Delaware retained a pastor who had sexually abused two minor girls at prior churches, a jury found the organization liable after he committed a third assault at the new church. The decision illustrates the central question every youth-serving organization faces: what does adequate staff supervision actually require, and where does falling short become…
PTSD Awareness Day falls on June 26, and it’s a good time to review requirements for ADA accommodations of children in youth programs. When a child in your program has PTSD-type behavioral problems, your organization’s legal obligations under the ADA do not wait for a formal diagnosis, do not disappear because the behavior is disruptive, and do not permit…
Every incident report your organization files is a legal document, not potentially, not only if something goes wrong, but a legal document from the moment someone signs it. After three decades of advising youth-serving organizations through litigation, licensing investigations, and regulatory audits, I have seen more cases turn on the quality of an incident report…
Tuesday’s post on Doe v. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University walked through what happens when an institution investigates itself amid structural pressures that make an objective result difficult to achieve. That case raises a question every youth-serving organization and its counsel eventually face: when allegations of misconduct arise, do you investigate internally, or do you bring…
On May 21, 2026, a federal district court allowed a former Virginia Tech student’s Title IX claims to proceed, after cataloguing a series of investigative and procedural failures that the court found raised a plausible inference of sex discrimination. The order is not a verdict. Virginia Tech may yet prevail. But the court’s detailed account of what…