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
September 8, 2026
Every plaintiff's attorney in a youth sexual abuse case asks the same question: did the organization follow accepted safety practices? Many organizations assume the answer required two adults present at every activity. That assumption does not hold up under scrutiny. No universal legal standard...
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A Texas school district just spent four years defending a retaliation claim before it finally won. Dr. Johnathan Castille, a special education administrator in Port Arthur, sued, claiming the district retaliated against him for reporting abusive teachers. Earlier this year, the appellate court ruled in favor of the school district. I’m not an employment lawyer, and I won’t…
A background check that comes back clean does not end an organization’s legal exposure. It only removes one source of it. The larger risk is in constructive knowledge: what an organization knew, or should have known, before something went wrong. Two ways to be negligent, not one Negligent hiring and negligent supervision claims do not…
A federal court in Texas once found that the state’s child welfare agency had done nothing to reduce caseloads, even though it knew children were being harmed as a result. Caseworkers were carrying more than double the recognized caseload limit. Some went months without seeing the children on their lists. The court did not describe a…
Youth-serving organizations that receive federal funding face a specific liability framework under Title IX that most administrators understand only in outline. The deliberate indifference standard sounds protective — you cannot be liable unless you responded unreasonably to known harassment. In practice, though, the 11th Circuit’s cases show that a code of conduct, a harassment policy,…
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…