With everything that happens at the beginning of a new school year, finding time and resources to train new and returning employees can be challenging in those first few weeks. But complying with requirements to train your staff on their Mandated Reporter responsibilities and conducting other statutory training is a critical priority for all California schools.
Child Abuse Prevention
Since 2015, all school employees who come into contact with pupils – as well as those who supervise such employees – must complete annual training on Mandated Reporter requirements, including:
- Detection of child abuse and neglect
- How to report suspected cases of child abuse and neglect
- The consequences for failing to report
The law specifies that Mandated Reporter training must be completed within the first six weeks of each school year. New school employees must receive this training during their first six weeks of employment.
Keeping children safe and fostering an environment that prevents misconduct and abuse in the first place is indispensable to educational success. Failure to comply with Mandated Reporter training requirements can lead to severe consequences, both to the district and individual employees. Besides impacting liability insurance costs and creating greater exposure to multi-million-dollar claims, criminal actions against employees and administrators is a serious possibility.
Sexual Harassment Prevention
For over 15 years, California has required employers with fifty or more employees in California to provide two hours of interactive sexual harassment prevention training to supervisors every two years. Additional components on abusive conduct, gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation are now included as well. Compliance with legislation expanding this training requirement to employers with as few as five employees and to non-supervisory personnel was recently delayed to January 1, 2021. However, employers who meet the sexual harassment training requirement sooner can then wait two full years before retraining personnel.
Mandated reporter and sexual harassment prevention trainings are so much more than just meeting legal requirements. They are an essential foundation to your school’s risk management program. They communicate that you are serious about stopping inappropriate behavior in your school and provide a powerful deterrent to perpetrators. Accurate documentation of employee training is important in defending claims against your district.
Keenan SafeSchools online training platform provides a turnkey solution for conducting these mandatory trainings and reliably documents completion by each and every employee covered by the requirements. Your local Keenan representative can assist you.