Who hasn’t heard that warning rattle through their radio? Or their TV?

We’ve all heard it at some point. But for people like me who almost never listen to the radio and prefer to skip through commercials by watching digitally recorded TV, you might struggle trying to remember the last time you heard or saw a legitimate storm warning or other notable emergency.

Fortunately for most of us, this problem ends later this month when every major wireless cellphone carrier and the federal government launches the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) service. In a nutshell, just about anyone with a cellular phone will be able to receive a brief text message alert whenever a threat exists in their immediate area. Because the service is location-based, it won’t matter if you’re a Californian visiting Wisconsin when a tornado warning hits Milwaukee… you’ll get the warning.

In addition to weather alerts warning about things like tornadoes, tsunamis, wind storms and flash floods, the service will also publish AMBER alerts for missing children.

You might be wondering, “How do I sign up for the Wireless Emergency Alerts service!?” Good news, you don’t have to do a thing. This warning system will be an opt-out service which means as soon as it goes live, you’ll receive warnings.

How Will Wireless Emergency Alerts Work?

More Information From Wireless Carriers

If you have any more questions about the WEA, you can visit the Frequently Asked Questions page on the CTIA website, or you can read more about it from your wireless carrier:

• AT&T
• Verizon
• Sprint Nextel
• T-Mobile
• U.S. Cellular
• Cricket

In an age where our privacy is rapidly eroding, what do parents expect of their child care center or family child care provider about protecting their family’s privacy?

Parents expect their child care program to keep confidential everything they know about their children and family. Parents may not say this directly, but that’s what they want. It’s what we all want for our own families.

How do issues of privacy arise in a child care setting? Consider the following situations:

• You post a picture of a child in your program on the classroom wall or your refrigerator.
• A parent asks for the mailing addresses of the other parents in your program so they can mail an invitation to a summer picnic.
• You create a children’s photo album of pictures you’ve taken throughout the year and give one to each parent as a Christmas present.
• You post videos of the children in your program on YouTube.

In each situation the privacy of the children/family has been compromised.

Handling the High Expectations Parents Have for their Privacy

1. Follow your state’s child care regulations regarding privacy.

Some states require child care programs to keep confidential all information about children except as requested by a governmental agency (i.e., child care licensing, police, child protection, etc.) or unless the parent gives written consent. Other state rules are silent on the topic of privacy. State child care rules more often detail what type of records you should maintain on the children in your care.

2. Establish a privacy policy for your program.

Whatever your state child care rules say, I strongly recommend that you create your own privacy policy. Your policy should start with the assumption that all child/parent information will be treated confidentially. It should indicate your obligation to follow state laws, and lastly promise not to release any information without parent permission.

Here’s a brief example of a privacy policy:

The ABC Child Care Program is pledged to keep all information about your child and your family confidential. This means we will not release any information unless we are required to under state law or if you give us written permission to do so. State law mandates that we release certain information when requested by child care licensing, law enforcement agencies, child protection agencies, or government health officials.

We will also not release any information about your child/family on the Internet, without your written permission. This includes the posting of names, contact information, photographs, videos, audio of children or family members on our website, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, or any other location on the Internet. We will not share information through texting or sharing of photos on cell phones.

Many child care programs do follow common practices that involve sharing private information about children. To save yourself the time of having to seek out permission from each parent for each practice, it makes sense to include such common practices in your privacy policy and have parents give permission by signing your policy.

For example, your policy could include additional language like:

Here is a list of common practices our program follows. Please place your initial next to each practice that you consent to:

• Posting of photographs of your child around our center/home.
• Posting of first names of your child on his/her artwork and cubbie.
• Use of a video surveillance camera in your child’s classroom that will only be shared with staff (for training purposes) and with authorized authorities, when requested.

3. Monitor and Review Your Child Care Privacy Policy

Once you have a child care privacy policy in place, be alert to instances where privacy may be an issue. A parent wants to take pictures of her child with other children while visiting your program. Your own child posts the name of a child in your program on her Facebook page. During a parent interview the prospective parent asks for the name of a parent in your program as a reference. You take the children on a field trip and each child wears a nametag. In all of these situations you want written parent permission.

Review your privacy policy at least once a year with parents to make sure everyone understands what your policy means. Revise it as necessary. Your policy should evolve as new technologies create additional challenges to everyone’s privacy.

About Tom Copeland

Tom Copeland is a licensed attorney in St. Paul, Minnesota who writes books, gives workshops and advocates for the business of child care. For additional information on privacy and other legal issues facing child care programs, visit his blog or email him at tomcopeland@live.com.

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Because every single camp is unique, we’ve found that a single, pre-prepared presentation or video simply won’t cut it. Discussing incident reporting to an experienced staff of counselors, for example, is going to be different than a similar discussion with first-time counselors. And what might seem like an important topic to one camp isn’t going to be relevant for another. For these reasons, we always work one-on-one with our summer camp customers to identify the specific topics that are most relevant to them.

I thought it might be interesting to run a report for all of you to see what summer camps – at least the summer camps that we work with – are concerned about in 2012. Here is the data from that report:

Summer Camp Counselor Training Requests in 2012

After looking over this information I think it’s interesting how much overlap there is between the concerns that camps have and the concerns most parents sending kids to camp have. Does this information surprise you at all? Let us know in the comments section below.

Here is more information on some of the topics listed above for those organizations we don’t have an opportunity to work with.

Bullying and Peer Pressure

There is no question that bullying and cyber-bullying are increasingly hot topics for anyone that works or lives with kids. But even as hugely popular anti-bullying initiatives like It Gets Better, and the full-length documentary, Bully, connect with today’s youth, we still hear things like, “Kids need to toughen up! Bullies only use their words. No one actually gets hurt.“ As long as people cling to these fallacies we’ll continue to show this video of Casey Heynes, a young boy that had had enough of bullies picking on him. Regardless of whether or not a child fights back, someone is always getting hurt.

We think summer camp counselors (and really anyone working with kids) are in a perfect position to identify and prevent bullying. The same is true for dangerous activities kids engage in as the result of peer pressure. The Choking Game is a perfect example of this. Counselors can protect campers by being informed and having open conversations about these dangerous games.

Outdoors and Weather Safety

The impact that weather and nature can have on summer camp safety really depends on the types of activities of each specific camp. Day camps that operate out of a building, for example, are less susceptible to trouble caused by major, unexpected storms. On the other hand, a program like Camp Widjiwagan in Ely, Minnesota that sends teenagers on 40+ day canoe trips to Alaska is going to have huge exposure to extreme weather.

In addition to preparing for lightning, heat exhaustion, and disaster preparation in general, camps will also want to prepare for other outdoor-related exposures like bed bugs and ticks that carry Lyme Disease.

Aquatics for Camp Counselors

This training might be one of the most important for camps. Camp directors often place a lot of emphasis on properly training lifeguards, and they absolutely should, but it seems that aquatics training for camp counselors is rarely discussed. This is a big problem.

In any swimming situation we recommend that a supervising adult be present depending on the swimmer’s age. (Our recommendations for child supervision in pools can be found in our Aquatics Best Practices Guide.) At camp a camp counselor is a child’s adult supervision. This means they need to be trained in the most effective ways to supervise children in the water and how to communicate effectively with the lifeguarding staff.

We have always started this training session by playing the footage from Yoni Gottesman’s drowning. While shocking, the video effectively shows just how important a camp counselor is in promoting aquatic safety. Some of the most important responsibilities of a counselor include:

• Letting lifeguards do their jobs. Lifeguards have their hands full; a counselor should never be a distraction.
• Sharing important information about the campers. No one knows campers better than their own counselors. Counselors should inform lifeguards about any camper that isn’t a strong swimmer, might be tired from earlier activities, or is a little under the weather and may not be in tip-top shape.
• Getting in a good position to supervise. Supervising several young swimmers is not easy. Counselors can do a better job, however, simply by positioning themselves in a beneficial location. Sometimes being in the water isn’t going to be the best supervising angle.
• Encouraging safe swimming and promote the buddy system. A counselor should always be the voice of reason. Counselors must set a good example and should never engage in horseplay.

If the carnage displayed in that 30 second clip showed us anything, it was just how devastating things can be in a worst case scenario. The setting for this new clip is similar in almost every way; the only difference is the outcome.

The Luckiest (and most aware) Driver You’ve Ever Seen

The driver had to react in a split second on multiple occasions. Had he been distracted in any way the outcome would have undoubtedly been different. This is just one more reason to put your phone down and keep your eye on the road.

According to the boys’ father, the boat capsized after a strong gust of wind struck the sails. He reportedly tried pulling all three boys to shore, but strong currents made that impossible. Instead, he left the boys in the water as he rushed to shore to get help.

By the time emergency crews arrived 30 minutes later, all three boys were non-responsive.

The Water isn’t Safe Yet

Although air temperatures were in the high-50s and low-60s that day, the water temperature in Clearwater Lake was still extremely cold. The same continues to be true for most northern lakes throughout the country.

Hypothermia occurs whenever the body’s core temperature drops dramatically from 98.6°. Once the core body temperature dips below 93° victims will lose most control over the hands, arms and legs. As the body temperature continues to drop below 82°, victims will lose consciousness and the heartbeat will become erratic. For young children in near freezing water, it doesn’t take long for the core body temperature to reach these dangerous levels.

Even though most of the country is experiencing record temperatures this spring, water temperatures still have a ways to go before they’re considered safe for swimming. Never enter water that isn’t at least 50°, and even at temperatures that low do not spend extended periods of time submerged.

Lou Glassman, the Facilities Manager for West Bend, kicked things off by sharing details on the incredible level of associate involvement needed to keep West Bend’s 370,000 square foot campus operational. Each year, West Bend associates perform 13,000 hours of maintenance, 23,000 hours of custodial services, 6,000 hours of landscaping and grounds work, and another 6,000 hours of engineering and administration.

One of the main topics of discussion for the day was the impact that preventative maintenance can have on operational efficiency. Mike Hinckley, Senior Facilities Engineer, and Joe Philipps, AV Technician, shared West Bend’s strategy for ensuring all equipment operates as long and as effectively as it’s supposed to.

Here is the five step preventative maintenance program West Bend uses to ensure everything is working at an optimal level. While West Bend has a relatively large facility, these same steps can easily be adapted to fit the needs of any sized home or business.

A Five Step Preventative Maintenance Program

1. Identify Equipment Requiring Preventative Maintenance

The first step in an effective preventative maintenance program is identifying the equipment being used by your facility. Every organization is going to rely on different mechanical systems, which means a one-size-fits-all approach isn’t going to work.

Take time to think about all of the systems needed to keep your organization humming along. A YMCA, for example, will obviously want to consider all of the equipment needed to keep the pool running, while a summer camp may need little more than basic electrical systems and a backup generator.

After all of the equipment has been identified it will be necessary to pinpoint the main components that each piece of equipment relies on. For example, most organizations, but especially those that cater to young kids and the elderly, will likely rely heavily on the continued performance of an HVAC system. When considering the individual components of an HVAC system you’ll need to think about the chiller, air handler, etc.

2. Determine the Preventative Maintenance Tasks

After you’ve identified all of the equipment your facility relies on, the next step in your preventative maintenance program is determining the individual tasks required to maintain the equipment. This process can be extremely complex depending on the equipment in your facility, so a good place to start is the manufacturer’s warranty. Look through the equipment warranty information and pick out every individual task required to maintain that warranty.

It is unlikely, however, that you will be able to determine all of the tasks required to keep equipment operational simply by looking at the warranty information. Be sure to consult Operations and Maintenance (O&M) recommendations and maintenance experts to fill in any holes in your list.

Once all of the tasks have been identified, record them for future reference. Recording tasks can be as basic as listing them in a spreadsheet, or as complex as importing them into a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS).

3. Perform Preventive Maintenance

After going through all the fun of identifying equipment and determining the laundry list of tasks needed to keep things running smoothly, you actually have to ensure that preventative maintenance is accomplished.

When it comes to performing preventative maintenance it’s important to think about the most cost effective way to get each task done. The two options you have for getting work done are having someone in-house perform the work, or have a contractor perform the work. Most organizations, West Bend included, will rely on some combination of the two.

It’s important to have a healthy understanding of your staff’s particular strengths and weaknesses. Rather than performing a task at a substandard level, it might make more sense to bring in help from the outside. For example, West Bend’s facility maintenance team is good at a lot of different things, though sophisticacted HVAC tasks that require specialized equipment or certifications, are often best left to experts. So, when it comes time to perform complex HVAC preventative maintenance, contractors are usually called in to do the work.

Randy Stark, the Director of Internal Services for West Bend, says, “It’s important to note that independent contractors should really be an extension of your staff. When we have someone from outside of the company come in to perform work, we have the same expectations for them as we do our own associates. They’re expected to start work on time, maintain an appropriate and professional appearance, and stand by their work. And, in turn, we treat contractors with the same level of respect as our own staff. If you choose quality providers and manage them in this fashion, they will assume the same level of ownership in your facility as you do.”

4. Gather Feedback on the Preventative Maintenance

After performing preventative maintenance it’s extremely important to get feedback from end users. At West Bend, the end users are West Bend associates and visitors to the campus. At your organization, the end users may also include paying members or patrons, or someone from the general public.

Be certain to make detailed notes whenever follow up work is requested. Tracking this information can help lessen the risk of equipment failure in the future, which in turn shortens any potential downtime.

You must also gather feedback from those people that actually perform the work. Imagine the following scenario: you have a task setup that requires an air filter to be changed every 3 months. On time, every 3 months, a member of your maintenance staff replaces that filter and everyone goes about their daily routines. Without feedback from your staff how do you know if that filter actually needs to be replaced every 3 months? What if, upon inspection, it seems the filter is clean at every 3 month interval? Perhaps the task should be rewritten to only require a change every 4 months… or maybe every 6 months. Without feedback, you’ll never know.

5. Edit the Preventative Maintenance Task List

After gathering feedback from the appropriate parties, adjust your task list to accurately reflect the work needed. As the example above highlights, there will always be some level of variation when it comes to performing preventative maintenance.

Listen carefully to the feedback provided and make adjustments where necessary. Remember, you are looking to strike that perfect balance of performing maintenance no sooner or later than it needs to be done.

Finally, in addition to make minor adjustments to your preventative maintenance task list as work is being done, you will also want to audit your entire task list on a regular basis; in most cases, an annual audit should do the trick.

The following graphic shows the difference from the average temperature for the contiguous United States. The entire Midwest experienced March temperatures 10-15° warmer than usual.

Record Temperatures in March

In fact, temperatures were so high that 2012 had the warmest March on record, beating the previous high set in 1895. Here are some more interesting statistics about March 2012:

• Of the more than 1,400 months that have passed since the record began, only one month, January 2006, had a bigger difference from the average temperature.
• 25 states east of the Rockies had their warmest March on record.
• Every state experienced at least one record daily temperature.
• A total of 15,272 warm temperature records were broken.
• The nighttime temperatures were as warm, or warmer, than the existing daytime record in 21 instances.

While most folks likely welcomed the warmer temperatures with open arms, seismic shifts in weather patterns aren’t without consequences. In addition to the warm weather, the NOAA also reported that there were 223 preliminary tornado reports, which is nearly triple the monthly average. The majority of tornadoes occurred over a two-day span across the Ohio Valley and the Southeast, and caused 40 fatalities and more than $1.5 billion in damage.

The Dangers of Warmer Temperatures

So far, it seems as if temperatures in April have balanced back out a bit, but it’s possible that March was an indication that we could have a very warm spring and summer. Here are a variety of safety concerns that organizations should be prepared to address once the high temperatures reappear:

Vehicular Hyperthermia & Heat Stroke

Since 1998, more than 527 children having died from vehicular hyperthermia. Vehicular hyperthermia occurs when a young child is left in a vehicle and their core body temperature reaches lethal levels. Did you know a child’s underdeveloped thermoregulatory system warms at a rate of three to five times faster than an adult’s? And because the temperature inside a vehicle can raise about 19° in ten minutes a child should never be left unattended for any amount of time. Learn more about vehicular hyperthermia.

Adults and kids, like infants and toddlers, are susceptible to thermoregulatory shutdowns as well. Anytime the body’s internal temperature reaches more than 105° a person is at risk for permanent disability or death. Learn more about heat exhaustion and heat stroke.

Deadly Storms & Disaster Preparation

As the record number of tornadoes in March 2012 indicated, high temperatures can, and often do, lead to deadly storms. Severe weather systems devastated huge parts of the country last year. We wrote about the importance of tornado readiness on Culture Of Safety last year following the tragic Joplin tornado. We also highlighted how ignoring visible weather warnings may have contributed to five people dying after strong wind gusts caused a concert stage to collapse at the Indiana State Fair.

With so many sad stories last year we were happy to hear about disaster preparedness paying off for one of our customers. Read about how proper training and quick action can save lives.

NOAA National Climatic Data Center, State of the Climate: National Overview for March 2012, published online April 2012, retrieved on April 11, 2012 from http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2012/3

Then I saw this video clip. I will never, ever look at driving in snowy conditions the same way again. Please, share this footage with absolutely everyone you know by clicking on one (or more) of the sharing buttons to the left.

Please note that this footage is disturbing.

You might also be interested in:

• Dangers of Texting While Driving
• Using Siri While Driving
• Vehicular Hyperthermia
• Parents Backing Over Children

The problem with in-service trainings is the same problem anyone that has ever tried scheduling a meeting has experienced; getting even a small group of people in one room at one time is nearly impossible. When you consider that the large majority of lifeguards are part-time employees with other responsibilities and time commitments, it is truly surprising in-service trainings take place at all.

Some aquatics directors and lifeguard trainers schedule in-services months in advance and demand that all lifeguards attend. “In-services every first Tuesday of the month. Clear your schedule. No ifs, ands, or buts.” This undoubtedly works for some pools, beaches, and waterparks, but what about those aquatics programs that struggle with this hard-line approach?

I decided to do some research into free, easy-to-use online scheduling tools that might alleviate some of the headache of scheduling lifeguards for in-service trainings. If you have been struggling with in-service attendance rates, take a few minutes to watch this quick demonstration… it might be exactly what you are looking for.

VIDEO: Online Scheduling Tools for Aquatics Directors

After sampling a few online scheduling tools, I felt Schedule Once offered a solid, free solution. While you can access more features with a premium version of the software, I found that the free edition was more than enough to help with getting a large staff of lifeguards on the same page. (I encourage you to try a few other meeting schedulers to see which best fits your needs. This review on Mashable is a good starting point.)

Once you have imported your own availability into the calendar, you simply copy the link Schedule Once provides and send out to your crew. You can send the link via email, Facebook message, or any other method that will reach your guards. If guards forget to share their availability… maybe you will forget to add them to the next schedule.

I can speak from experience that rearview cameras are incredibly helpful for preventing minor parking lot fender benders. And, believe me, you’ll never want to hitch another trailer without one. This legislation, however, isn’t being passed for such mundane reasons. This new regulation, which could tack on an additional $160-200 per vehicle, will dramatically reduce the number of people injured by a vehicle backing over them.

Believe it or not, more than 200 people are killed (and an additional 8,300 injured) every single year by a vehicle backing over them. To make matters worse, 44% of fatalities are children under age 5, and more than 66% of the time a child’s parent or other close relative was driving the vehicle.

This new regulation still must pass through Congress, and may take several more years to become fully implemented, so please always take time to ensure there aren’t unsuspecting victims behind your vehicle when you are reversing.

Spot the Tot: Deadly Blind Spots

Please take a moment to watch this Spot the Tot demonstration. You’ll be amazed at just how much you can’t see.