Where to find Standards of Care
As you review your child protection policies and consider changes, you need to know the standards in your field. We lawyers call it the “standard of care,” a term that means the policies and procedures that similar youth-serving organizations (YSOs) in your area follow. Camping programs, for example, will have different standards than schools, and childcare centers in Texas will have different standards than those in Pennsylvania.
To figure out what your standard of care is, you can look in several distinct places:
1. Licensing and Regulatory Standards. If state or federal regulations govern your industry, then those rules will set the minimum standards that you must follow. For example, most childcare centers must have state licenses and follow licensing rules. Some states license camps or independent schools. Those regulations will set the floor for your policies. If those licensing rules require three (3) reference checks before hiring someone, then your standard is at least three (3) checks. You have no choice but to find room in your schedule to do those checks, no matter what your other sources of standards recommend. Similarly, Title IX applies to all school programs (including K–12) that receive government funds. Complying with Title IX regulations, then, is a baseline for child protection policies in any such school.
Finally, licensing rules for other YSOs in your field may establish the standard of care, even if the rules don’t directly apply to your organization. For example, many states exempt church nurseries from regulations for childcare centers. Yet, the regulations may still establish the standard of care because they have become the norm for child-caring programs. So be aware of the regulations that govern similar organizations in your field, even if they don’t apply directly to you.
2. Association Standards. Many industries have organizations where participation is voluntary, but the standards are mandatory for members. Safe Sport for youth sporting programs is one such example. Safe Sport rules apply to most national sports organizations, and any local sports program that wants to participate in those organizations must follow Safe Sport guidelines. Because Safe Sport is so well-known, its policies have become the default standard even for many groups that are not part of those national programs. As with regulations, these voluntary policies can become part of the standard of care in a field.
3. Accreditation Standards. Accreditation is another voluntary standard that offers guidance. Different accreditation associations have different rules that help you meet the standard in the industry. You can find this in National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) for childcare centers, the American Camping Association (ACA) for camping programs, or any number of education programs. Because these accreditation standards are voluntary, they aren’t mandatory standards for the industry, but they may offer good information about what most of the groups in your industry are doing.
4. Guidelines and Publications. As we mentioned earlier, there are numerous books and paid programs about child protection policies. While we don’t recommend that you simply adopt someone else’s program, these publications are excellent sources of information that you can adapt to your organization. One excellent resource that is a bit dated but still has timeless recommendations is the CDC publication, Preventing Child Sexual Abuse Within Youth-Serving Organizations: Getting Started with Policies and Procedures. Its principles work just as well for preventing all types of abuse, not only sexual abuse.
Many insurance companies publish recommendations, either in formal publications or in informal blog posts or emails. Ask your insurance agent not only whether your insurer has such publications, but what other insurance companies work in your field. Those other companies are likely to have publications on their websites that can give you some helpful ideas. We have found helpful policies for YSOs at sites for Brotherhood Mutual, Adventist Risk Management, The Redwoods Group, and Scouting America.
5. Custom and Practice in Your Area. A final important source of standards is the policies of similar organizations in your geographic area. You will need to keep up with developments in your field and pay attention as customs change. For example, for many years, no one thought about criminal record checks for volunteers. However, now the practice is so common that all organizations that work with young people need to do some level of checks for most workers. Even if statutes or licensing rules don’t require you to conduct those checks, the fact that everyone else does means that your program also must meet that standard.
Researching child protection policies can be intimidating, but looking at these specific areas can help you make the task manageable.
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This article is adapted from our book, Protecting Other People’s Children. Learn more by ordering the book from Amazon or directly from us.
