Safe Environment Training Program Best Practices
The power of safe environment training is in empowering all of the people who work with and around children with a basic understanding and knowledge to recognize child abuse and alert proper authorities early enough to minimize abuse. In essence, effective safe environment training creates thousands of trained eyes constantly watching for signs of abuse.
In a recent news story, a high school coach admitted to sexually abusing a girl on the team he coached. The abuse was eventually discovered by the parent. If all of the assistant coaches, volunteers, parents and staff at the school had been trained in recognizing signs of child abuse, it's possible someone would have observed the coach's and girl's behaviors and notified authorities sooner.
When thousands of eyes are focused on abuse child abusers are put on notice that everyone around them will be watching them and the children. Knowing that everyone with whom they work and volunteer is watching for signs of child abuse may scare away or give pause to child abusers. In the above example, the coach may never have risked his career and life if he had known that everyone around him could spot his abusive behaviors.
As a leader in your diocese tasked with responsibility for safe environment training, you understand the importance of implementing effective safe environment training. The following best practices can greatly impact your safe environment training program:
Respectful of Local Diocesan Needs
While all arch/dioceses/eparchies share a common mission, no two dioceses are the same. One size does not fit all. Make sure to ask for a program that meets YOUR diocese's training needs, not those of the provider.
Cost-effective
While everyone has their own definition of "cost-effective," every diocese is responsible for effective stewardship of its diocesan budget. Look at the total budget including all aspects of developing, licensing training content, staffing, reporting and running the training program. Safe environment training does not need to be expensive to be effective!
Remember too that your volunteers spend money on gasoline, babysitters and time off work. While these expenses are not part of your budget, their impact is felt by your volunteer community and could impact volunteer recruitment and retention efforts. A safe environment training program with online learning as an option can reduce costs for both diocese and volunteers while decreasing obstacles for volunteers.
Educationally Sound
The material should be understandable at both reading and technical levels. Teaching so people understand the content and can take appropriate action requires more than presenting information. Be sure master educators designed the training.
Demonstrated Understanding
Go beyond recording attendance. Require people to pass a quiz to demonstrate their understanding of the training content before meeting their training requirement. This small requirement helps increase understanding if done correctly and assures parents that diocesan employees and volunteers learned the content.
Sustainable Change
While training once or repeating the same training over and over may meet compliance requirements, it falls short in empowering people to create safe environments. People also tire of seeing "the same training as last time" and will tune out at renewal trainings. New training content should be available every year.
Parent Involvement
Parents have ultimate responsibility for protecting their children. Parents also know their children better than anyone else. Safe environment training must be easily accessible to parents.
Availability and Accessibility
An important, and often overlooked aspect of training, is making training available when a person can best focus their attention on learning the content. For some, that time is after putting their children down for bed and relaxing with a cup of tea at their home computer. Other individuals will find several 15 minute periods and access online training over a week between meetings or while traveling on business. For others, it will be in a classroom with other volunteers.
Participants in classroom training may not be fully "present in the moment" when training is being conducted because they are focused on other things, like picking their children up from the babysitter or finishing a project at work. These people will not hear or take in the training content and may as well have not attended the training session.
Ensure that your safe environment training program is accessible over the Internet, in face-to-face sessions and for individuals. By meeting your training participants when, where and how they best learn, you can increase their understanding and ability to act responsibly if called upon.
Language
As immigrants work and volunteer in our communities, it is important to teach them in their native language with sensitivities to their country of origin's culture. Having your safe environment training program in the languages of your immigrant population can greatly improve your non-English speakers participation in the diocese while ensuring a consistent training message in a multicultural environment.
Support Services
If you use an external provider of safe environment training ensure that the provider is going to walk with you in providing support for your diocese's safe environment program. Can you and your participants receive timely responses via live support (phone & chat) as well as email and self-help resources? Just as learning should be available to participants in multiple formats, so should support to best ensure that your training participants can focus on learning the content. And you can focus on fulfilling your mission as a safe environment administrator as well as the other jobs you have in the diocese when you have a support system to lean on.
Reporting
Whether you are looking for a comprehensive report on all participants for your audit or your local coordinators need to verify an individual's training completion, access to your training records should be available whenever you need it. Preparing reports should not take days, weeks or months. Nor should you have to wait for parishes and schools to submit reports for compilation at the diocese. Centralized and standardized data collection and reporting is a big time-saver when preparing for an audit.
Scalable
As your diocese grows its safe environment program and more people volunteer, it is important that your training program grows and adjusts to your unique diocesan needs. Whether you need to ensure a large group of volunteers is trained for a youth rally in your diocese or individuals want to volunteer when face-to-face training sessions are not available in their area, your safe environment training program should be accessible and flexible enough to meet your needs without increasing your work or allowing volunteers a "grace" period to volunteer before the next training session in their area.
Implementation
Diocesan staff and volunteers should not be required to attend a "Train the Trainer" session in another city or state. Nor should you spend a great deal of time or money planning for and implementing the training program. A safe environment training program should make your job easier allowing you to focus on the important work, not day-to-day operations.
Safe & Sacred™ Environment Training
If you would like to learn more about how the Safe & Sacred™ Environment training program can help you implement these and more best practices to meet your diocesan safe environment training needs, please contact us for a free consultation and demonstration.
