More cities requiring background checks, ID badges for youth sports coaches
Youth sports volunteers are subject to safety measure
December 24, 2007
By
Nick C. Sortal
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
She's more than happy to be a team mom for her sons, so Angela Walker is willing to participate in the latest attempt by cities to keep the fields safe.
She wears an ID badge, showing that she has cleared a criminal background check. So does every coach and anyone else who comes into contact with the children.
"It gives you a sense of security to know they're in good hands," said Walker, whose sons play football, basketball and baseball. "You can't just allow anybody and everybody around your child."
Riviera Beach joins West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and other cities that started ID badge programs this year. Hollywood began requiring ID badges for its more than 600 volunteer coaches more than two years ago.
The badges are one more safety measure in youth sports. Particularly in large cities, the children and the coaches don't know each other, and an adult with a poor track record could be in a position he or she shouldn't be.
Riviera Beach Parks and Recreation Director John Williams said most of the volunteers are like Walker, and cooperate.
"They understand why we're doing it," he said. "After all, most of them are parents, too."
The cities fear lawsuits if they don't require the background checks, because they could be held responsible should a volunteer molest a child, hit one or give one a beer. The logic: Youth coaches and other volunteers are "unpaid staff" approved by the city.
But then another problem surfaced: How do you know that the guy on the field coaching is a cleared coach, rather than just some dad (with a criminal record) who appears one day "just to help pitch in."
So Hollywood parks staff walks the fields daily, making sure coaches and other volunteers who are near children, such as team moms, have their badges. They carry a master list of approved people and politely ask those who haven't been cleared to take a seat in the stands.
That includes, say, a dad who's just trying to provide an extra pair of hands on the field.
"Most of them understand," says David Vazquez, the city's sports coordinator. "But honestly, sometimes that conversation goes better than others."
Meanwhile, Wellington runs background checks but doesn't use badges, which can create a false sense of security, Leisure Services Director Jim Barnes says. Instead, the focus should be on preventing future offenses, he says. That means sports leagues must monitor their volunteers and parents should keep an eye on their children and not regard coaches as baby sitters.
Eleanor Warmack, executive director of the Florida Recreation and Park Association, agrees that parents shouldn't give too much weight to the screenings, which have become more prevalent because of the Internet.” There are 101 ways to abuse a child, and not all of them go through the criminal system," she says.
Warmack estimates ID badges are being used by fewer than 10 percent of Florida cities, and she supports them as long as parks officials make sure that everyone wears them. Meanwhile, she says coaches should be fingerprinted, rather than just having their information punched into a computer. State Sen. Jeremy Ring, D-Parkland, proposed a bill late in the session requiring all youth sports volunteers be fingerprinted. He says he'll try to push it through when the Legislature resumes.
Meanwhile, the National Recreation and Park Association has a partnership with Michael Pfahl, whose program, Operation TLC Squared, prefers running a person's Social Security number through databases of criminal records. He argues that not only is a database check cheaper — usually about $20, compared with about $40 for fingerprinting — but it also has a faster turnaround time.
The company, which runs volunteers' information through databases, has conducted 3,287 background checks this year, and about 7 percent of the checks (225) disqualified a candidate, Pfahl said. But only two checks yielded volunteers with sex offenses.
Just the threat of the check itself, and being found out, is a great deterrent, says Gladys Pentilla, a Fort Lauderdale recreation program coordinator. Of the 653 sports volunteers Fort Lauderdale has fingerprinted this year, only 34 have been rejected, she says.
Badges have been in place for 10 years in the American Youth Football League, based at 15 parks in South Florida, AYFL President Laney Stearns says. But the badges were as much for decorum — a team is allowed only six coaches on the field — as for screening, he says.
Mitch Grant, a baseball coach at Driftwood Park in Hollywood, says he has no problem with the ID badges, but he doesn't like that several coaches who had been around for years were disqualified when the city took over screening from Driftwood Youth Sports, he says. And children are as apt to be abused in off-the-field situations, such as a team party at a parent's house, he says.
"Actually, I think for the city it's all about liability," Grant says. "They don't want to get sued."
Background checks have become a standard in the recreation field, says Ian McGregor a risk management consultant in Blaine, Wash., who specializes in parks and recreation.
They go with parks' other recent additions, such as lightning prediction devices, which warn park patrons to clear the field before the first bolt is in sight, and defibrillators, in case someone has heart trouble.
"If nine out of 10 cities are doing something and you're not, then you should take a look at doing it," he says. But the overall approach should be toward participant safety, he says, not avoiding lawsuits.
McGregor called the ID badge trend "interesting" but overall wouldn't necessarily provide a city with more legal protection: At this point there is no industry standard established as to how cities will enforce the program.
"To me, the bigger issue is, 'Are you doing the checks?'" he says. "Whether you wear a badge or not isn't a big deal."
Nick C. Sortal can be reached at nsortal@sun-sentinel.com or 954-385-7906.
