Safety Tips for Kids, Clubs, and Sports

Safety Tips for Kids, Clubs, and Sports

Ready, Set, Get Educated

When kids return to school, they have the chance to join sports and clubs. These activities can be an essential opportunity for them to socialize with their peers, learn helpful skills like teamwork, and have fun. It’s also a place where adults interact with children, so it’s important that adults know their responsibilities in preventing and reporting potential abuse. Keep reading to learn about safety tips to support and protect kids!

What to Look For: Policies and Training

Organizations should have and follow rules for reporting any kind of abuse. Everyone, especially those in charge or with authority, should know it’s their job to quickly tell the right outside people if they think or know that a child is experiencing abuse.

Also, organizations must give all their staff and volunteers proper training to prevent, spot, and report abuse. This way, they’re prepared to notice any signs of abuse and take the appropriate steps to deal with it.

Adults who work or volunteer in sports or club organizations are mandatory reporters. In 2024, the Minnesota legislature amended the mandatory reporting statute to clarify that:

“(c) A corporation, school, nonprofit organization, religious organization, facility as defined in section 260E.03, subdivision 6, or similar entity must not have any policies, written or otherwise, that prevent or discourage a mandatory or voluntary reporter from reporting suspected or alleged maltreatment of a child in accordance with this section.”

Organizational policies should include clear and specific guidelines to minimize one-on-one time between adults and children and define appropriate, inappropriate, and harmful behaviors. Furthermore, organizations should prioritize the implementation of meticulous candidate selection processes, which may involve conducting thorough background checks and reference checks for all staff and volunteers who will be working with children.

Preventing Child Sexual Abuse Within Youth-serving Organizations from the Centers for Disease Control is a valuable resource for organizations as they develop these policies.

Learn about how to report abuse in Minnesota and the guidelines for mandatory reporters. Reporters can access online training through the Minnesota Child Welfare Academy at no cost.

Safety Rules and Activities to Use with Children

Ideally, these programs provide supplemental education to caregivers and their children about their right to be safe in their bodies. However, as a caregiver, you can start teaching your kid(s) about body safety in developmentally appropriate ways from an early age.

Making safety rules and guidelines easy to explain to children and talking with child protection groups can make efforts to protect kids even more powerful. Here’s a great list of body safety rules consistent in most prevention education programs.

Safety Rules to Cover with Kids

  1. Say “No” to Unwanted Touches
  2. Identify Safe and Unsafe Situations
  3. Use Proper Names for Body Parts
  4. Establish Boundaries
  5. Seek Help from a Trusted Adult

Want to learn more? Check out our Child Abuse Prevention resource page.

An Activity for Identifying Safe Adults

Complete the following worksheet from Educate2Empower with your child(ren) so they can readily identify several adults they can talk to when they have worries or questions about their safety.
Download the My Safety Network worksheet.

Working with Partners to Prevent Abuse

The Alliance is a statewide member organization of children’s advocacy centers (CACs) that work to provide coordinated, supportive follow-up and investigations of reported abuse. Contact us if you need help developing your policies and training to prevent abuse! You can also find your nearest CAC and reach out to build local relationships that support the safety of children.

Links to Learn More

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