Convening Aquatics Professionals: Child Abuse Prevention in the Aquatics Setting

Child abuse prevention is everyone’s responsibility. Whether it is locker rooms, swim lessons or swim team practice, we want to be sure that your aquatic staff are prepared to recognize, respond and prevent abuse from happening. On April 15, 2021 we focused on steps that your aquatics department can take to make abuse prevention a priority.

You can watch the full recording below.

Additional Resources 

Staff Training

  • Abuse Prevention Scenarios—We created these scenarios in order to give staff the opportunity to discuss, in a group, different situations they may find themselves in when working with children.
  • Four Rules for Child Safety —Review with staff the four rules for child safety: no inappropriate touch or language, no alone time, no favoritism, and no outside contact between staff or volunteers and children.

Policies & Procedures

  • Child Abuse Prevention Code of Conduct—This Child Abuse Prevention Code of Conduct should be signed by all employees to help protect staff, volunteers, members, guests and program participants.
  • Child Abuse Prevention Plan—This plan is a great tool for your leadership and Board of Directors to use in order to enact a written plan to manage programs and minimize the potential for an abuse incident to occur.
  • Child Safe Environment Handout—This handout can be used to educate parents, guardians and other community members on your abuse prevention policies and how they can support these policies.
  • Know. See. Respond. One-Pager—This resource provides questions to ask yourself about the policies and practices at your organization specific to training, monitoring and responding to abuse.
  • Layers of Protection when Hiring Staff & Volunteers—This resource reviews multiple layers of protection your organization can implement when hiring staff or volunteers.
  • How Safe Are Your Bathrooms?—This resource contains guidance on how to keep your locker rooms safe, and implement robust monitoring systems.

Webinars

National Initiatives