Originally posted by Rockne: </font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Logthosehours:
(mainly those events where the volunteer is "alone" with a child)
Which volunteer activities have the volunteer alone and unsupervised with a child? Curious.
Tim </font>[/QUOTE]Hey Tim, our students just had health screenings and everyone of these kiddos were brought to a large room and each child was examined by one person for each form of screening. No clue if THEY (not one parent volunteer) had a background check but I was called to make sure mine was in order to assist with picture day... Afer the resent events with the Catholic church, I will gladly have finger prints done and take what ever class I need to protect the kiddos!
Sorry, I just feel if one person has to be checked EVERYONE should.
I've quickly glanced through these posts so pardon me if I miss the big picture.
KY State law requires background checks on ALL staff and volunteers. Our district is big on confidentiality so the PTO vol coorids are not allowed to know if a check has come back bad or not. That kind of freaked me out at first because when I was learning all this I was in charge of volunteers. The checks are sent to the principal after the super looks at them. If the offense is minor he or she has the right to decide if he/she wants that person in his/her school. I haven't seen actual documentation of this law but I am sure it is in compliance with this federal law you are talking about.
I did have some parents question this alot. So at the first volunteer meeting I would tell them that I was clueless of their background check and if they could not come to events or help out that I would merely assume that they had other priorities to take care of. To my knowledge that was always the case. The principal handled everything else and her supervisors.
There are very few situations but when I said "alone" I was referring to reading out in the hall with a child. You technically aren't alone but it is much more private and heck, something can happen anywhere but we are much more cautious when finding volunteers for those situations.
We would rather not have volunteers "alone" with a child. The old boyscout rule "two deep" helps to keep our volunteer program running along.
I sure didn't want to open this can of worms as I know it has been discussed numerous times.
I am mainly looking for someone with knowledge of the 1998 Volunteers for Children act.
(mainly those events where the volunteer is "alone" with a child)
Which volunteer activities have the volunteer alone and unsupervised with a child? Curious.
That's been one of my takes all along -- and the MA law as I'm reading it seems to support this, too -- one of the keys is good systems so that volunteers aren't alone unsupervised with the children. If that's in place, then a lot of these background check worries should be significantly minimized.
Hate to throw the volunteers out with the bath water.
It does take some organization to keep up with the records but PTO manager has made that easier on us! We have asked all volunteers to register with PTO manager, and have a form for those without internet access for our volunteer coordinator to enter them on the site. This provides us with a list of all volunteers. Our school requires background checks every 5 years. We present our list of volunteers to the school and the school compares it to their list of background checks received and gives us back the list with those that have background checks on file checked-off. Those without checks are then contacted via email/phone call and asked to fill out a new background check form. We try very dilligently to ensure all volunteers have a background check but from my prior post you may see there are holes in the system. We are trying to come up with ways to fill in those holes. We do have volunteers without background checks helping but we do not go up to those volunteers and tell them to go home. We do ask the committee chairs to submit a list of volunteers prior to their event (mainly those events where the volunteer is "alone" with a child, for example reading in the hall with a child) and we check that list against the background checks on file list. We are a little more forgiving when it comes to events that do not include "alone" or "one on one" with a child. It isn't a perfect system. We are working on it. Any suggestions will be considered.
As for the volunteers and asking them to fill out the background check: I have found that if you have guidelines and stick to them, they are happy to comply. I have only heard a few grumbles and that is mainly because it is only a state check for our state. If the person commits a crime elsewhere, we do not know that unless we do the fingerprint check, www.fbifingerprintcheck.com
, and it hasn't come to that yet. That's a WHOLE OTHER CAN OF WORMS for a whole different topic thread! [img]smile.gif[/img]
Like I said, not a perfect system but we are trying.
For the PTOs that are doing background checks I have a couple questions:
- Isn't it a lot of work figuring you have a couple hundred volunteers a year?
- How do you handle the one's that just show up at the last minute to help, but have not done a background check?
- Do you get any push back from people that are not really that involved, but are just helping out once or twice.
The idea sounds good, and it's got to make it safer for the kids. But being all volunteers and the complixity of managing volunteers as it is - is it fesible to do it?
