About This Blog
Youth-serving organizations take on a serious responsibility when they open their doors to children and other vulnerable people. Fulfilling that responsibility well requires two things working together: a safety culture strong enough to prevent harm, and independent investigations credible enough to find the truth when someone alleges mistreatment.
Youth Services Law covers both. Posts examine the legal landscape, practical decisions, and organizational choices that shape how schools, camps, churches, colleges, faith-based groups, and community organizations protect the people in their care and respond when something goes wrong. The goal is the same in every post: precise, useful guidance for child protection and investigations.
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Featured Post
October 1, 2026
October is National Bullying Prevention Month and often prompts programs and pledges. It is also a useful occasion to examine what negligent supervision claims require when a peer, not an adult, causes the harm. That standard is more precise, and more forgiving in some cases, than most...
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October is National Bullying Prevention Month and often prompts programs and pledges. It is also a useful occasion to examine what negligent supervision claims require when a peer, not an adult, causes the harm. That standard is more precise, and more forgiving in some cases, than most administrators assume. Peer Harm More Common Than Adult Abuse The…
Seven states have enacted a version of Trey’s Law, and a federal bill has passed the U.S. Senate. Those laws prevent settlement agreements in child abuse claims from requiring confidentiality. Every version voids a nondisclosure clause to the extent it prohibits disclosure of child sexual abuse or facts related to it. Most of them leave settlement-amount confidentiality intact. None…
Minnesota made grooming a stand-alone felony this August, and other states have passed similar laws in recent years. It is a genuinely interesting development in criminal law, and it is worth understanding. But the law really doesn’t address how grooming works. More important, if you run a youth-serving organization, none of these new criminal statutes…
A program director resigns after you find text messages with a teenage participant that don’t warrant a mandated report but do violate policy. Six weeks later, a camp two states away calls asking for a reference. What you say next can cause legal problems, and so does what you leave out. Most administrators default to…
I wrote last week about how to prepare for a crisis and last month about how to respond immediately. Today, let’s look at the first week. The first 24 hours after a crisis reward speed. The first week rewards judgment. Both stages carry their own legal traps, separate from the operational scramble your organization is…
On September 24 at the CAFO Summit in Atlanta, my law partner Tom Rawlings and I are leading a workshop called “Start Planning Now for a Crisis.” It’s built for youth-serving organizations that want a real plan in place before something goes wrong, not a scramble after it does. If you’re at the conference, stop…
Youth-serving organizations that send staff to trauma-informed care training often come back with a quiet, unstated conclusion that consequences are now optional. A camp counselor stops enforcing the no-phones rule for a camper with a hard home life. A program director drops a three-strikes policy because staff worry about retraumatizing anyone. Nobody writes this down…
Tom Rawlings and I are presenting “Planning Now for a Crisis” at CAFO’s 2026 Summit, scheduled for September 23-25. This post hits the highlights of what we’ll be presenting. If you’re in the area, consider joining us at the conference. A crisis plan is not just an operational tool. It is part of your organization’s legal defense….
Every plaintiff’s attorney in a youth sexual abuse case asks the same question: did the organization follow accepted safety practices? Many organizations assume the answer required two adults present at every activity. That assumption does not hold up under scrutiny. No universal legal standard requires it, and no research shows it works better than the…
As summer programs wind down and school-year programs start up, many organizations pause between training cycles. That pause is worth using to look at your training program. One of the first questions anyone asks after something goes wrong is whether your organization trained its staff. The real question is not whether a training happened, but…