It’s Summer Time!
As DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince sang …
“Summer summer summertime, Time to sit back and unwind…”
Says no mom EVER. I mean, seriously. Sit back? Unwind? Ha ha ha ha.
Your welcome for getting this song stuck in your head today. ;0)
As a working mom, summertime means I better have my childcare lined up in the form of a camp or babysitter for every single week between now and the end of August. Luckily, the Austin Four Points area offers a seemingly endless number of camps and activities for children. But, what do we know about these programs? How can we ensure our kids will be safe while they are there for hours at a time?
For you readers who don’t know me well, this is actually my jam. For the past nine years, I’ve had the opportunity to help organizations keep children safe. I work with schools, churches, camps, and other similar youth-serving organizations ensure they are doing everything they should to keep kids safe. I’m going to occasionally write these SafeMom posts to help you ensure you’re asking the right questions to those who work with your children.
So, as you’re evaluating your summer camp options, I encourage you to ask camps the following questions.
SafeMom’s 5 Questions to Ask Summer Camps
What screening process do you follow for adults who will be working or volunteering in your program?
- Make sure they run a national or multi-state criminal background check. Unfortunately, many offenders can avoid detection of a criminal history by moving to a different state and getting a job somewhere that only checks criminal records in that one state.
- Ask about reference checks. Do they call previous employers or personal references?
Do you train your staff and volunteers about preventing sexual abuse?
- Mandated reporting training is NOT the same. You’re wanting to hear that their staff are trained on how adult offenders operate and how peer-to-peer abuse occurs.
Tell me about your policies regarding how your staff and volunteers can interact with my child.
- We’re looking for clear-cut written policies about appropriate and inappropriate physical affection, verbal interactions, and one-on-one interactions. Policies guiding such behaviors help everyone identify when someone is acting outside of the bandwidth of what is acceptable.
How do you supervise children to ensure their safety?
- Specifically, we want to hear about how the program manages high-risk activities, such as bathroom procedures, when groups of different ages are mixed together, and free times.
Do you use youth volunteers, and, if so, what are your policies pertaining to their roles in your program?
- This can be a very risky element at summer programs. You want to hear that youth volunteers are never responsible for supervising children on their own and should always be in the presence of an adult staff member. These older youth can truly help manage chaos in summer programs, but we want to make sure they themselves are being supervised. Specifically, they shouldn’t be the ones supervising bathroom activities or alone with children.
I’d love to hear if you have any other questions you ask programs. Or, if you tried out these questions, let me know what you thought.
