Volunteer Child Safety Policies and Procedure
In order to comply with the United
States Conference of Catholic Bishops Charter for the Protection of
Children and Young People, the Church of Saint Ann has written policies
that guide the recruitment of volunteers that work with children. These
policies are available at the Faith Development Center for anyone to
see.
The procedure for
implementing these policies for all volunteers that have regular,
ongoing, unsupervised contact with children is as follows:
1. All
volunteers must fill out a volunteer application. The application
includes space for references. References will be checked. Volunteer
Application
2. Each
volunteer is required to be fingerprinted and have a criminal history
background check. Universal Fingerprint Forms are available from the
Religious Educaiton Office or from the Coordnator of Volunteers in the
Faith Development Center. The parish will reimburse the volunteer for
the fee. Sagem Morpho, an outside contractor that the State Police
have contracted to do volunteer criminal history checks, conducts the
fingerprinting session. Sagem Morpho is located at Parkway Corporate
Center, 1230 Parkway Avenue, Suite 102, Ewing, NJ. The hours of
operation are Monday through Friday 9:00 am to 4:50 pm and the 2nd
and 4th Saturday of each month from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm. The
contact phone number is 877-503-5891.
The procedure for
fingerprinting is to call Sagem Morpho or visit their website at
www.bioapplicant.com/nj to make an appointment. The website gives
the fastest turnaround time for getting an appointment. You will pay
with a credit card or echeck online or mail in a money order. If you
mail in a money order, you must check back a few days after mailing to
make the appointment. No appointments are made until payment has been
received.
After the appointment has
been made you take the Universal Fingerprint Form that you were given
when you filled out your volunteer application and a photo ID to Sagem
Morpho.
If you do not have
the completed Universal Fingerprint Form and an acceptable photo I.D.
you will lose your appointment and be charged a $14.00 non-refundable
fee. It is important that you keep your appointment. The parish will not
reimburse for missed appointment fees.
You will be given a receipt after
your prints are taken. You must bring your Universal Fingerprint Form
and your receipt to the FDC and give them to Margaret Marino or
Christine Barranco to be copied. They will be returned to you. These are
forwarded to the Diocese as proof of fingerprinting.
The
report comes back to the Diocese within 7 working days. They will be
notified that you are cleared, or you have a disqualifier that makes you
ineligible for contact with minors or your prints were rejected and need
to be re-taken. There is only a 3% chance that prints will need to be
redone.
No
volunteer fingerprints are ever released to other agencies. Fingerprints
are confidential and are the property of the Diocese of Trenton. They
will not and cannot be shared with any other volunteer or criminal
investigation agency.
If there is a disqualifier on a
candidates record, the Diocese will send a letter to the pastor
indicating that. The pastor will call you and let you know that you can
appeal the disqualifier. This involves contacting the State Police to
get your criminal History (we do not receive this report and have no way
of knowing what the disqualifier may be) and sharing the information
with the Diocesan safety officer and the pastor. Together they decide is
the disqualifier is overturned.
If the prints are rejected you
will need to make another appointment to be fingerprinted. If the second
set does not come out, they will do a name search.
3. Each volunteer is required to attend a Virtus
program. Virtus is the brand name for the “Protecting God’s Children, .a
program designed for adults to help understand and prevent child sexual
abuse. Child sexual abuse is a major social problem and we feel this
program will be of great help to all in creating a better atmosphere for
all of our children. The program is a three-hour session and they are
held regularly in the Faith Development Center. Upcoming sessions can be
found at:
http://www.virtusonline.org/virtus/reg_list.cfm?theme=0
Each class will start promptly and latecomers are
not given credit for attending. After attending the class you must
register online at www.Virtus.org. Until you are registered
online, your attendance is not validated. You must register online to
be given credit for attending the session.
4. Each volunteer must read and sign the Code of Conduct for Volunteers.
We understand that this is a lot of work for someone who is volunteering his or her time. We know that for 99.9% of our parishioners, this is inconvenient, time consuming and most likely unnecessary. However, if we are able to prevent one sexual predator from coming into contact with our children then it is time well spent. Thank you for your willingness to participate. Your parish community is grateful.