Safety Questions for Overnights, Camps & Dorms

By Sara Kennedy, H&V Headquarters

Within the O.U.R. Children’s Safety Project, we have had requests to address safety for children who are deaf/hard of hearing (DHH) within settings like overnights at camp, with other families or through field trips and within school dorms for some time, accelerating this year by the requests of Deaf professionals. One concept all agreed on was to create a list of possible questions that parents can ask when considering their child’s safety in these situations. Those who we allow in our family or child’s circle of trust must be held to the highest standards, and that takes time to develop; yet the field trip or dorm arrival is pending. Asking these questions if not already answered in orientation or welcome material is another way to intentionally address keeping kids safe from bullying, neglect, and abuse.

While the Parent Safety Toolkit covers this concept to an extent, some additional questions are added here by consensus of a group of parents, educators, and Deaf individuals. We are grateful to DOVE (Deaf Overcoming Violence Through Empowerment) for sharing about this and more in a recent presentation to the O.U.R. Children’s Project community of learners. We can ask better questions to keep kids safe.

Here’s the working document. We would welcome any feedback on this and want to recognize that some Deaf schools (Texas and Colorado, for example) are implementing 15-minute bed checks throughout the night and other steps to ensure student safety.

What can we do to make overnights safer for our Deaf/HH and Deaf/HH Plus kids?

Parents have a responsibility to ask questions and make observations where their child’s health and safety are concerned. If another parent, camp, or school does not want to answer these questions, that in itself may be a red flag for your child’s safety.

Overnights:

Do the parents supervising share the same values for child safety? It is okay to ask questions:

• Who else will be home (older adults or older teens may be a red flag),
• What is planned? Any kind of outings and with whom?
• Will my child have language access?
• Who is supervising? Is this the whole evening/night/morning? 
• Are their guns in the house?
• Can my child call at any time if concerned? (Talk with child about a safety plan just in case).

Follow up with your child privately afterwards about any concerns during their time away. 

Overnight Camp, Field Trips, or Similar Experience

• Have all staff had background checks? No registered offenders on staff?
• What is the plan for supervision during the activity, during down times and overnight?
• What is the training around child safety?
• If my child might be at particular risk, does the staff have training in their unique needs?
• Can students contact a parent when desired and how? 

Follow up with your child privately afterwards about any concerns during their time away. 

Questions to Ask Programs and Schools for the Deaf: 

Ask all the above questions plus… 

• How are students instructed in keeping healthy boundaries with other students, staff, and teachers?
• How are staff monitored for promoting healthy boundaries?
• Are the teachers (and dorm staff, if applicable) trauma-trained?
• Is there a past history of abuse and how was it handled here? When was it?
• Are the students taught to recognize grooming techniques?
• Are the students taught to resist peer pressure and to share concerns they have?
• Are they allowed to say no without reprisals?
• Do they understand A.C.E. (Adverse Childhood Experiences) and their impact on the longevity and health of children with ACES?
• How are students supervised on school buses? What is the communication access on the bus?
• Does your school use seclusion rooms? (Note: At times, these rooms have been used to discipline kids without parental consent. Parents may want to include in their children’s IEP forbidding the use of seclusion rooms and outlining specifically what actions to avoid and to take for a child with significant behavioral issues.)
• What are the visitation rules for parents and family members?

Dorm and after/before school questions:

• How many students per dorm counselor on each shift? (Lower ratios are better; but even better is awareness about when greater supervision should occur.)
• How often are bed checks done at night?
• Are the students separated by age in the locker rooms and bathrooms? What about other times of the day/night?
• What is the plan for supervision after school, before and after meals, during free time, sports and extra-curricular activities, and when moving between buildings?
• Can students contact a parent when desired and how is that done?
• Will they have a point of contact if they feel unsafe? (School nurse, advisor, etc.)

Suggestions for parents to enhance child safety within programs:

1. Visit the school or program a few times first. Public tours may show the best-behaved students and most engaging teachers. Use your observation skills to see other students and notice how they interact with students and staff. Do they look happy? Relaxed? Fearful? Isolated? Do they seem adequately supervised and cared for? Listen to your gut feeling.
2. Get input from both hearing and deaf parents. People will be very protective of their school.
3. Research on the Internet on the history of any school mistreatment of students. Most are unreported, but some will be available.
4. Check out Deaf groups… like in r/Deaf in Reddit, Quora, and AllDeaf.com. This is a good link:
5. https://www.alldeaf.com/community/threads/sexual-abuse-of-deaf-students-in-schools.6829/ 
6. The Deaf community can be reserved in front of hearing people, but share freely among themselves. There are many Deaf vlogs, but hearing parents may not have access to those in ASL.
7. See various parents of deaf children/students’ groups on Facebook.
8. Strict segregation of students by age is important to allow for better supervision and less access by older students who may bully or molest younger kids.
9. Maintain frequent contacts with the Deaf child. Talk to the child through the videophone, face-time or video platforms (Zoom) daily. If not every day, every other day. Have the child go home every weekend or every other weekend if that’s possible. If the family has relatives or friends near the residential school, have them visit the child frequently. The more contact the child has with others, and the more trips home or with relatives and friends, the less vulnerable the child will be.
10. Also ask the child casually if he/she had been mistreated or witnessed anything that concerns them. Educate your child on safety, touch as a choice, healthy boundaries, etc. Encourage the child to talk about school experiences, both good and bad. Tell the child not to be afraid to discuss anything. Most importantly, tell the child they won’t be punished. (See the Kidpower Protection Promise for an example in the O.U.R. Children’s Project Parent Safety Toolkit)
11. Enroll the child at an older age or when the child can sufficiently retell a story with enough detail to understand what happened, be able to tell someone “no” or “stop”, and to tell a trusted adult. The younger the child, the more vulnerable the child is.
12. How does a parent know if the child has become influenced by the institutional mentality?
13. “We are products of our environment. If we learn as a young child that maltreatment is normal at school, we might also learn that we are expected to keep this a secret. Most abused children never tell a parent until we were adults. Some of our parents didn’t ask, either. For older students, the biggest problem is that we didn’t go home often. The few who did talk were either dismissed by parents who didn’t believe them or were taken out of the school.”
14. Keep talking to the child, asking open-ended questions. Model healthy relationships and read books showing healthy relationships. If a child avoids talking about certain topics, that raises a red flag.
15. Observe the behavior of the child, too. If the child’s behavior changes or they experience nightmares, that is another red flag.
16. Ask the child about secrets. Families don’t keep secrets (they may keep surprises – that is different.)
17. Also observe how younger kids play with toys. Kids tend to rehash their experiences through play.

Advocate for greater safety in Deaf schools. There has been a history of minimal or no accountability by state departments of education and Deaf schools per some families’ report.

This document was developed with families, professionals, and organizations that advocate for child safety, including Deaf/hard of hearing children.  ~