The Santa Maria Girls Softball League is committed to providing a safe environment for its members and participants, along with preventing abusive conduct in any form. Every member of this organization is responsible for protecting our participants and ensuring their safety and well-being while involved in sponsored activities. To this end, we have established the following guidelines of behavior and procedures for our staff, volunteers, and participants. All members of this organization, as well as parents, spectators and other invitees are expected to observe and adhere to these guidelines.
1.Abuse of any kind is not permitted within our organization. This means we do not tolerate physical, sexual, emotionalor verbal abuse or misconduct from our players, coaches, officials, volunteers, parents or spectators.
2.Physical and sexual abuse, including, but not limited to, striking, hitting, kicking, biting, indecent or wanton gesturing,lewd remarks, indecent exposure, unwanted physical contact, any form of sexual contact or inappropriate touching arestrictly prohibited within our organization.
3.Emotional abuse or verbal abuse is also prohibited. These include, but are not limited to such forms of abuse as: yelling,insulting, threatening, mocking and demeaning religion, nationality/ethnicity, sex or age.
4.We are committed to providing a safe environment for our players, participants and staff. We do so by appointing allcoaches, officials and volunteers and anyone else affiliated with our organization as protection advocates. Every memberof this organization is responsible for reporting any cases of questionable conduct or alleged mistreatment toward ourmembers by any coach, official, volunteer, player, parent, sibling, or spectator.
5.Buddy System: We recommend that every activity sponsored by our program put a Buddy System in place. Each youthparticipant should be assigned a buddy during sponsored activities. No child should go anywhere to the bathrooms, lockerrooms, or other location without his or her buddy.
6.To further protect our youth participants, as well as our coaches, officials and volunteers, we strongly advise that noadult person allow him/herself to be alone with a child or with any group of children during sponsored activities. Inparticular, we recommend that coach or other adult members of this organization: * Do not drive alone with a childparticipant in the car * Do not take a child alone to the locker room, bathrooms or any other private room * Provide one-on-one training or individual coaching with the assistance of another adult or the child's Buddy * If you must have aprivate conversation with a youth participant do it within view of others, on the field, instead of in a private office *Coaches and other adult members of this organization should not socialize individually with the participants outside ofsponsored activities.
7.Supervision/Chaperone ratio: We recommend that for any sponsored activity, the ratio of adults to youth participants be1:8 - one (or more) adults for every eight children, with a minimum of two adults for every activity.
8.When traveling overnight with youth participants, children should be paired up with other children of same gender andsimilar age group, with chaperones in separate but nearby rooms.
9.We want to empower our children to trust their feelings and let them know that their concerns, fears, and hopes areimportant by listening to them. Open communication between, children and parents or between children and other adultsin the organization may help early warning signs of abuse to surface.
10.We encourage parents to become as active as possible in sponsored activities, games, practices and other events. Themore parents are involved, the less likely it is for abusive situations to develop.
11.We will respond quickly to any and all allegations of abuse within this organization. This information will becommunicated. to the authorities for investigation and will be reviewed by the organization's directors. The allegedoffender will be notified of such allegations promptly.
12.Any person accused of sexual or physical abuse may be asked to resign voluntarily or may be suspended by the boarduntil the matter is resolved. Regardless of criminal or civil guilt in the alleged abuse, the continued presence of the personcould be detrimental to the reputation of the organization. Reinstatement is not a right, and no guarantee is made that he orshe will be reinstated to his/her former position.
13.We promote good sportsmanship throughout the organization and encourage qualities of mutual respect, courtesy andtolerance in all participants, coaches, officials and volunteers. We advocate building strong self-image among the youthparticipants. Children with a strong self-image may be less likely targets for abuse; similarly, they may be less likely toabuse or bully others around them.