Promoting Good Practice

The following simple guidelines can help to minimise situations where abuse may occur:

Wherever possible, avoid situations where employees or contractors and individual children are completely unobserved;
Where possible, parents should take responsibility for their own children in changing rooms. Where classes have to be supervised in changing rooms, always ensure that employees work in pairs;
People who work with children should discuss with their manager whether any contact with those children outside of the work environment is merited. This includes contact via electronic media, including social networking sites;
It is preferable that mixed activities are supervised by a male and female employee;
Those working with children should never:
- Engage in rough, physical or sexually provocative games including horseplay;
- Allow or engage in inappropriate touching of any form;
- Allow children to use inappropriate language unchallenged;
- Make sexually suggestive comments to a child, even in fun;
- Let allegations a child makes go unchallenged, unrecorded or not acted upon;
- Do things of a personal nature for children that they can do for themselves.

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