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…