Have you ever heard the words, “we can’t find (place child’s name here)“? Or had a parent walk up to you after the program ended and all the children were gone asking, “where’s my child?” only to have to say “I don’t know”. I have and these are not situations I want to face again.
We talk about protecting children. We put policies in place. We even take some “abuse” from parents and volunteers about how strictly we enforce those policies and we wonder if it is worth it all.
Dale Hudson shares with us a sobering reminder of why we need to be vigilent with our policies to make sure the proper person picks up the child. Click here to read his post…
Great reminder, but would like to know how other clubs deal with check outs. This was a church service this little girl was kidnapped from. They use security tags for pick up. Do Awana clubs use these too?
Admittedly the child was not taken from a ministry, but seemlingly during a greeting time in the service. Dale Hudson (the author of the post) is referencing general children’s ministries where they use “security tags”.
I know of some churches that use security tags for Awana (and I have considered it since we use them Sunday mornings). I currently use a sign out procedure where we keep the child in the room until an authorized adult comes to pick up the child and sign them out.
how long does your sign out take though? We have about 75 kids, that may take awhile to do. We currently have adults at each door and make sure that they do not leave without an adult.
We use a sign out method with adults at the doors checking for children leaving with their parents. I have never heard of the security tag method. Can anyone elaborate on that procedure? I was thinking about having my secretaries at the main door give tags to parents leaving their children and then the tags would be returned to the directors upon pick up. Please send advice or critiques. Thank you.