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The Kids Sports Network now offers youth leagues an opportunity
to conduct Criminal Background Checks on their volunteers that are
easier to administer, more comprehensive, faster and probably less
expensive than any you've conducted before.
- What is a background check?
- Why are they important?
- Who do you recommend to conduct background
checks?
- How are they conducted?
- How much do background checks cost?
- How accurate and thorough are the checks?
- Does my league need to do anything
to prepare before we conduct background checks?
- How can my league participate?
A criminal background check (CBC) is a manual or data base search
of state and/or local government files to determine if the individual
applying to volunteer has had a past criminal conviction. A CBC
must be sufficiently comprehensive to ensure that all convictions
are revealed. For example, a check of records in only one state
will likely not reveal a conviction that occurred in another state
where the individual previously lived. And, a check only for child
molestation convictions will not uncover a burglary or assault conviction.
Parents enroll their children in a league fully expecting that
they will be safe from harm. Conducting a CBC is one of several
actions that youth administrators must take to protect their participants
from abuse. Others include training and certifying
their volunteers, setting guidelines on parent
behavior and direct supervision of the league or program being
conducted.
To be effective, a CBC must be conducted before the volunteer is
permitted to associate with children and must be done annually on
all volunteers regardless of their position or the number of years
they have been involved in the league.
Who do you recommend to conduct
background checks?
After reviewing several companies, the Kids Sports Network has elected
to use Volunteer Select Plus to offer CBC's to youth sports
associations that are using other
KSN
services or are in some way associated with KSN. Volunteer Select
Plus accesses over 150 million conviction records in
46 states and, in
most
cases, updates
its files
monthly.
Little League Baseball, Pop Warner Football and several other national
organizations use Volunteer
Select Plus.
Leagues conduct their checks on line through the Volunteer Select
Plus web page and receive results in a matter of seconds rather
than days or weeks. There is no special software to purchase or
training
to attend. The cost of these checks is considerably less than what
most leagues are currently paying for a less comprehensive, more
complicated
system through other companies.
To have access to the Volunteer Select Plus criminal background
check process through KSN you will be charged a one time set up
fee of $25 that
is payable to KSN via check or credit card. This fee helps defray
the cost of establishing your access to Volunteer Select Plus
and the time involved
in providing you guidance on how to get started. Once that fee
is paid, KSN will send you more detailed instructions and will
issue you
a promotional code that will set your price for the basic National
Criminal File search at $1.75 and waive any other Volunteer Select
Plus registration fees. (Please note that this
is a special rate that is available only through KSN. If you deal
directly with Volunteer Select Plus the rate will be significantly
higher.)
When you register your account with Volunteer Select Plus, you
will be asked to give
them
credit
card
information.
Your
credit
card will be charged
once each month for all CBCs run the previous 30 days. You can
also request to be billed monthly for these fees. More detailed
information is provided when you set up your Volunteer Select Plus
account.
Background checks are only as accurate as the criminal records.
For example if the criminal court records in a county contain inaccurate
or incomplete information on an individual, then the information
that you receive on that individual will also be inaccurate. When
you run a check Volunteer Select Plus will ask for addresses and
other information on the person you are checking to aid in the
identification process and to help ensure that any conviction records
on that individual are accurate. That said, you will sometimes
receive conviction records that will require you to ask additional
questions of the individual to verify information and ensure that
the record is on that person.
Yes, there are several actions a league should take before conducting
background checks. (1) First of all, you must be a nonprofit,
501c(3), association. You will be required to send proof of
that status to Volunteer Select Plus in order to establish your
account. (2) You must have written permission from volunteers to
have a background check
run
on them.
You will be asked to verify this permission on screen when you
run a check on an individual. (3) Your league must have policies
in place on how to handle negative responses on individuals. For
example, is a volunteer disqualified from coaching because he/she
had a felony conviction ten years ago? Will you disqualify a volunteer
if he/she had a recent DWI conviction? (4) Leagues should have
a policy that limits access to derogatory information and defines
procedures for destroying the information after a period of time.
For more detailed guidance on this subject, please contact KSN.
To determine if Volunteer Select Plus is right for your league,
we encourage you to review their website especially
the National
Criminal File Sample Report and the Best
Practices sections. After you have done that, if you are still interested
in establishing
an
account
through
KSN,
please
call (210) 654-4707 or email
. You should be able to begin running CBCs within a week.
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