Organizations that work with children and youth must strive to create safe environments for youth, employees, and volunteers so that young people can grow, learn, and have fun. It is vital that youth-serving organizations create a culture where child sexual abuse is discussed, addressed, and prevented.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has developed Preventing Child Sexual Abuse Within Youth-serving Organizations: Getting Started on Policies and Procedures to assist youth-serving organizations as they begin to adopt prevention strategies for child sexual abuse. The guide identifies six key components of child sexual abuse prevention for organizations:

• >Screening and selecting employees and volunteers
• >Guidelines on interactions between individuals
• >Monitoring behavior
• >Ensuring safe environments
• >Responding to inappropriate behavior, breaches in policy, and allegations and suspicions of child sexual abuse
• >Training in child sexual abuse prevention