All youth organizations need to guard against grooming. The problem is that the characteristics used to describe both good mentors and predatory groomers are often similar, making it hard to tell the difference from outside the relationship. We’ve had numerous clients say, “Until we found out about the abuse, we thought he was the best…

I learned from my colleague Tom Rawlings’ Substack that a recent opinion from the Iowa Supreme Court takes a new look at the issue of parents’ leaving children unsupervised.  Paula Cole went shopping, taking her infant with her and leaving her five other children, ranging in age from 5 to 12, home asleep.  Predictably, two…

The start of the school always brings competing demands from parents involved in ongoing custody disputes.  Schools can get caught in the middle when parents bring those disputes into the school.  Now is a good time to establish some ground rules with your parents that may help you avoid becoming part of the drama. Get…

We have seen a tendency for youth-servicing organizations (YSOs) to concentrate all of their efforts on preventing sexual predators from entering the organization. While hardening your organization against pedophiles is an important goal, placing too much emphasis there can distract from other equally important concerns. First, there is no foolproof way to “detect” sexual predators….

One long-running controversy in treatment of people who have suffered from childhood abuse is whether and how much to delve into their memories of the abuse. In a recent study, researchers uncovered indications that people who don’t remember abuse, or at lest don’t report it to interviewers, have better mental health than those who do….

As we work with youth organizations to draft good child protection policies, we see three very common misconceptions. Youth-serving organizations genuinely care about protecting children, but they often unwittingly leave opportunities for maltreatment. The most common mistake we see is simply adopting someone else’s policy. Our advise is to adapt, not adopt, other policies. “We…