S03E141 Effective Child Protection Policies with Debbie Ausburn & Tom Rawlings

Safety should not depend on a binder no one reads. We sat down with Debbie Ausburn and Tom Rawlings, national leaders in child welfare, youth protection, and organizational safety, to map a path from good intentions to everyday practices that actually keep kids safe. Drawing on decades as a prosecutor, juvenile court judge, state child advocate, and advisors to youth organizations, they show how to build policies people will use, not ignore.

We unpack the core problem: top-down, one-size-fits-all rules look strong on paper but fail on the ground. Debbie explains why zero tolerance breeds exceptions and silence, while Tom lays out a culture-first model where staff report small mistakes without fear so teams can learn and prevent bigger harms. Together, we stress a simple aim, stop isolation, using realistic supervision like open doors, line-of-sight checks, and leaders present on the floor. We also go beyond the predator lens to address peer-to-peer risk, bullying versus conflict, and the everyday recklessness that creates openings for harm.

You’ll get a clear starting plan for the first 30 days: name a child safety coordinator, form two teams (prevention and incident response), audit your files for background checks and references, and benchmark against regulations and industry standards. Then keep the momentum with annual surveys to gauge psychological safety and whistleblowing confidence, micro-trainings that fit busy schedules, and tabletop drills that build crisis “muscle memory.” This is how policy moves from compliance to culture, and how organizations earn parents’ trust.

Reach Debbie & Tom here: 
Book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4airvz4
Website:  http://www.DebbieAusburn.com
Website: https://www.ysoacademy.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deborahausburn/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OtherPeoplesChildrenLLC
X: @debbieausburn
Instagram: @debbieausburn

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:52

The leadership and law podcast is here to equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to build a successful and fulfilling legal practice.

SPEAKER_02 1:11

Welcome to another episode of the Leadership in Law Podcast. I'm your host, Marilyn Jenkins. Please join me in welcoming my guests today, Debbie Osburn and Tom Rowlings to the show. Debbie and Tom are two nationally respected leaders of child welfare, youth protection, and organizational safety. Debbie is a social worker turned attorney with more than 40 years of experience serving youth. Her career has included roles as a camp counselor, probation officer, groupon parent, criminal prosecutor of crimes against children, and now litigation attorney who defends and advises youth serving organizations across the country. She's also the author of Raising Other People's Children, drawn from her experience parenting foster and stepchildren, and co-author of Protecting Other People's Children 120 Days to a Strong Child Protection Policy. Talm brings more than 25 years of leadership in child welfare, including serving as a juvenile court judge, Georgia's state childhood advocate, and director of Georgia's Division of Family and Children's Services. He's worked internationally in child protection and human rights, trained professionals around the world, and now advises child serving organizations on policy and best practices. He co-authored Protecting Other People's Children with Debbie. Together, they help youth organizations move beyond good intentions and build practical, effective child protection policies and cultures that truly keep children safe. I'm excited to have you guys here today. Welcome.

SPEAKER_03 2:34

Thank you. Glad to be here.

SPEAKER_02 2:36

Absolutely. Such an important mission that you have. Tell me a bit about how you got together and got this started.

Why Policies Matter Now

SPEAKER_01 2:43

I'll start. I've just always been bebopping around with youth organizations, as you mentioned. I was a social worker assigned to a juvenile court, burned out, went to law school, stayed involved in working with organizations, and then it just blundered into a law practice of realizing that a lot of these organizations needed good legal advice. And since I understood the organizations, I was able to add the legal expertise to it. And then Tom, he can tell you his background, but he and I ran into each other from time to time over the years and di in our different endeavors. Collided is too strong a word. We just came in contact. And then when he left his job at the uh child protective services in Georgia, I, at the suggestion of a mutual friend, reached out to him and recruited him to the law firm. And I Tom, I'll leave it to you to say which of my brilliant words talked you into coming on board.

SPEAKER_03 3:44

That's that's going to be kind of the funny thing. Debbie and I knew each other kind of in a professional role, but I don't think we realized until we really started talking and working together just how much we have in common. I think we is I think we both, as Debbie said, we both bring a lot more than simply the legal side to this work. And I think that's what also really makes our collaboration so fun. We talk, we we both got experience doing the practical work. And quite frankly, one of the things that sort of motivated this book was a conversation she and I had about the fact that when you're trying to protect children in an organization, you can't simply listen to lawyers because lawyers will tell you things that will you'll be the most risk-aversed organization of all time. And if you if you can't wrap children in bubbles, you have to in bubble wrap, you really have to to make sure that you're balancing the ability to serve children with the ability to protect children. And these conversations really led to this book, and it's Debbie's a lot of fun to work with.

SPEAKER_02 4:48

Love that. I love that. So let's talk about for organizations that serve you, why is it having a strong child protection policy is no longer optional but it's essential?

SPEAKER_03 5:00

Yeah. I guess I'll kick that off. The truth is that the in these this day and age, especially, if you if you are a parent, say looking for a camp, a church to serve your child in a nursery, a school, one of the first things you're going to be asking is if I trust these individuals with my child, will they keep my child safe? And unfortunately, what Debbie and I have seen is that in in the past, especially, that particular creating a child protection policy was often an afterthought. Debbie, talk a little bit about what you've seen in your practice in terms of policies that nobody knew about. I think that's kind of what we we're getting at here.

Predators, Pitfalls, And Paper Policies

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Right. A lot of it people who work with children are some of the nicest, most caring people in the world. And they tend to think that everyone else shares their love for children and their concern and their high-minded motivations. But the fact is that just I can't remember who was the famous bank robber who, when he was asked why he robbed banks, he said that's where the money is. A lot of predators are drawn to child-serving organizations because that's where the children are. And people who care about children, it's very hard for them to put themselves in the mindset of a predator. And so they're easy marks for trusting people. And predators are extremely good at manipulating parents and organizations. And I just saw this over and over. I started referring to my client as the other victim of the child predator. And there was a time there when my clients, a lot of folks, realized, okay, we have to do something. And so they didn't really know how to create a policy. So they went to folks who created policies for them. And they got these really nice notebooks and these long, long, intricate policies. And they tried in most cases to implement them, but they didn't work because they were top-down. They weren't tailored to the organization. And I depending on how much time we have today, I can give you some of the examples that just drive me crazy. But the so eventually the shelv the books just ended up on the shelf and everybody forgot about them until they got sued. And I was defending them and I was saying, We have an a discovery request here for your policies. And they went looking for them and there they were. And then you have the spectacle during a deposition of you have this in writing, why didn't you have it in practice? You had this in writing, why didn't you have it in practice? And Tom and I just saw that over and over. Well-meaning people trying to do something, but the policies were just not a good fit. And so th they just weren't implemented in various organizations. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 8:00

How do you fix that? They've gone to the point of getting that, having a policy. Are they just not training their people? It's not part of the day-to-day operation.

Culture Over Compliance

SPEAKER_01 8:10

Well, sometimes it's a lack of training, and and Tom can talk more about the culture, but a lot of times it's that top-down imposition. And a lot of them are sometimes it it's well-meaning lawyers. So I one example that Tom has heard me, I don't know, this is soap off for a box, soapbox number 329, about lawyers have have came up with zero tolerance policies. We're not going to tolerate anything that puts kids at risk. And it sounds good and makes everybody think, you know, that you're very serious, but the problem is zero tolerance policies don't work. First of all, they're very draconian, and people are very um hesitant to implement them, which means you make exceptions, which leads to favoritism, which leads to perceptions of favoritism and and culture problems. And then other people, co-workers, are very hesitant to turn in their their friends and their co-workers for innocent mistakes that violate the policy because they don't want them fired for innocent mistake. So you end up with the only people who are reporting it are the people who have a vendetta and really want to get this person fired, which doesn't help the culture either. So that's just one example of programs that don't work. So Tom and I recommend go to the frontline staff, go to your stakeholders, put together a team of people who know how these policies work or don't work, and have the team write the policies from the ground up. So Tom, you can talk a little bit more about the culture and how that works in practice.

SPEAKER_03 10:01

Yeah, I think that's from a lot of why we wrote this book is that top-down just doesn't work. When in the work I've done around the country, around the world, a lot of times what is that you have this policy that is designed in a headquarters somewhere. It is rolled out to field staff who are working with children. These children are of different ages, they have different needs. So, for example, there may be a no-hugging policy, which is maybe fine for a teenager, but really it doesn't make sense when you're talking about small children who need comforting. We'd see a lot of human resources folks going in and punishing people for mistakes. And really building off some of the organizational culture work that's been done, both in public child welfare, in hospitals. We really have tried to create a process that an organization can follow in which the protection policy is not simply a policy. It is part of the lifeblood of the organization. It is how the business is done. It is something that everybody has contributed to. It is something that everybody takes ownership of. And it's something that's considered a good, not something to be feared. So if you make a mistake, you report yourself. You report your colleague who made the mistake, not to get them in trouble, but so that we can figure out why this mistake occurred. And that way you get more consistency, and with consistency, you have a much better opportunity of preventing any actual incidents of child abuse or child neglect or harm to a child.

Two Teams And A Point Director

SPEAKER_02 11:43

Okay. All right. So now when an organization says that we know we need a policy, but we don't know where to start, what's the first step that you recommend?

SPEAKER_01 11:55

First thing we did is you put together two teams, you designate a person who is the point director, the child safety coordinator, and that has to be someone who either has subject matter expertise or has the time and the resources and the willingness to learn the field. So that's going to be your quarterback if you if you will. And then we have two teams. One is the child safety team, which puts together the prevention type policies, and then the incident response team, which puts together the policies for responding, but also we give them the responsibility for training, we give them the responsibility for putting together such as mandated reporter responsibilities, understanding the mandated reporter laws. So even though it's a responding after the fact is what we call them, there's still a lot of work for them to do from the very beginning. And those are different skill sets. And and you we have a list of people that you don't necessarily have to get, but you look to, you you look to legal advice. Uh lawyers are really wonderful assets as long as you keep us in our lane and don't let us get outside our expertise. Former law or current law enforcement. Again, they're wonderful resources, even though although they don't always understand how your organization works, and you may have to to teach them and train them. Stakeholders, if you have alumni who have been through your program, parents, board members, definitely need insurance professionals who can talk to you about what insurance is available and what you need. So there's a whole host of skill sets that we list in our book of just put together your team and then give them the defined tasks. First thing is audit the files and see if you have all of the criminal records checks and reference checks that you need. That's it's not easy, but it's simple. You just look at the records and start counting. And if you're missing something, then it's a good place to s to start building the skill sets of audits. And and then the there's a checklist of policies that we recommend that you look at. Some people don't need, some they do need.

Frontline Voices And Real Scenarios

unknown 14:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:16

Well, you yeah, I think you also during that process, the way we got it set up is when you're putting together these teams, you're actively reaching out to your frontline staff saying, you're doing surveys. How do you feel about our child protection work right now? You know, what how do you feel about the way the team operates? Is there any are there any concerns you have about the way we are handling child protection issues? What is the level of psychological safety among your team? Because that's one of the most important aspects of building a child protecting culture. And so, again, by putting these teams together and by having the teams who are everybody from leadership to frontline folks working together, it does become a team effort. It's a team building effort. And we also recommend that when you're when you're putting together these teams, you don't simply say, what's our policy on being alone with a child? You bring up actual examples of the daily work of what you've seen in the newspaper, bad things that have happened to other organizations. You do tabletop exercises. And from that, from the thinking about the reality of the work, you build your policies that are adapted to your team and that your own employees and staff and volunteers can buy into. Sounds like a lot of open communication to see where are we and where should we be.

Rethinking The Two-Adult Rule

SPEAKER_01 15:43

Absolutely. That's a critical. Very much. And a recognition of what actually works on the ground. A very common thing that I hear people tell youth organizations is you have to have a two-adult rule. You never allow one adult to be alone with children. That may work for volunteer organizations where you can just cancel the camp out if you don't have enough volunteer parents. Although I I think a lot of them have a three-deep rule, so you can have one adult and two kids. But in other organizations that that pay people, my clients don't have money to hire twice as many people as they need in a classroom. So you have to substitute other ways of supervision. Have a an open door policy, always having people within sight or sound. Those kinds of extra superv supervision by walking around of policies. So just figuring out if you can't have a two-adult policy, what can you substitute that reaches the same goal, which is to never let an adult isolate a child.

SPEAKER_02 16:56

And getting to going to your frontline staff, people that are on the ground, they see boots on the ground, they're the ones that can help you and see what's realistic when it comes to that. Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 17:05

You've got to if there's something there's a what we call normalized deviance that occurs. Um so let's say you have a two-adult role in your organization, and everybody recognizes that quite frankly, it's not practical to do that. So what they do is they just ignore the policy. And as a result, if something does happen, then as Debbie said, you're gonna have a lawyer questioning why you have this rule that nobody applied. And if the rule doesn't work, then people aren't gonna really have any faith in that rule. So you want rules and procedures and policies that real live members of your team can feel that they can implement. And you constantly go back and you ask, how's this working? Do we need to change it? You constantly, as you said, it's open communication. You've got to have constant feedback.

SPEAKER_02 18:05

I love that. I love that. And especially from the frontline people. Now, many people think like a child protection is just screening for predators, and it's really that's too narrow of a view, right?

SPEAKER_03 18:18

Yeah, absolutely.

Beyond Predators: Peers And Bullying

SPEAKER_01 18:20

Yes, because a lot of times, definitely predators are a big concern, but statistically, kids are in greater danger from their peers than they are from adults. I had a client one time that that had an issue with a staff member, and so it was one of these overnight residential programs. And so their solution was to put all the staff members in one cabin and all of the kids in another cabin so that the staff members could watch each other. And I said, no, let's let's go read Lord of the Flies and then talk about this. The greatest danger to kids is other kidens, and so you need bullying, anti-bullying policies. But then again, you have to decide what is bullying versus conflict, because you it's not a good idea to protect kids from conflict. They have to learn how to deal with conflict as a life skill and uh as a living in the world kind of skill. Sometimes you need to say to kids, toughen up and learn to live with disagreement, and other times you need to say to them, Thank you for telling me about this, we're going to deal with the bullying. You have to have a good answer and good definition of which is which. Otherwise, you're harming kids at one end or the other. Yeah, the proverbial pendulum swinging trying to get it right.

SPEAKER_02 19:45

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 19:47

So as Debbie said, you've got certainly you do have predators out there, but I think really what organizations are most troubled by are just reckless individuals, individuals who who just do stupid things and aren't being held accountable for it. Which is why a lot of what we talk about in terms of our implementation of the policy is building a team culture in which people call each other out. And if you see someone who makes a mistake, then that's not something to be punished. You just simply figure out how to fix the mistake or how to not have it happen again. At the same time, if you have individuals who are just running roughshod over the rules, ignoring them, continually just doing reckless things, being along with children when they shouldn't, for example, then you need to have accountability, a gradual, really a gradual increased discipline to address those issues. Because that's how you prevent the situation from becoming out of control to the point where someone actually is hurt.

Accountability Without Fear

SPEAKER_02 20:54

Okay, I love that. Now let's think about if you're if someone is say it's a smaller organization, they know they need to do this, and what would they do in the first 30 days to make meaningful progress to putting a plan in place?

SPEAKER_01 21:44

They put their teams together and they audit their program. We have that checklist to see what what policies they have and which ones they need. And so that's the first thing is just figure out what you have and where you are. And you get your teams together because many hands make light work and different people have different tasks and they audit different parts of it. And you can't start writing anything until you know what you have and what you need.

SPEAKER_02 22:15

I love that. So you're getting everybody involved.

First 30 Days: Audit And Align

SPEAKER_03 22:18

Yeah, as well as knowing what your risks are, we recommend that the team talk to their own people. What dangers do you see in this work? How in our program, what are some things that could happen to a child or that have happened before? And then, of course, going and looking at other organizations' policies. Ask around, ask what maybe there are industry associations, risk managers. Management associations, insurance companies, look around and say what is what are similarly situated organizations that do the same kind of work that we do. How are they handling these issues? Because that can inform the way that you put together your policies and really make sure those policies are consistent with the industry standard.

SPEAKER_01 23:07

Exactly. And regulations that apply to others in the field. Some states that regulate childcare centers will exempt religious institutions that have childcare centers. You still need to know what's the standard of care. What if you were bound by the regulations, what would you have to do? And are those standards that make sense for you?

SPEAKER_02 23:32

And where people have these their policies in place, how do you how do they keep them from being outdated or ignored and keep them active and effective all year long?

Keep It Current: Surveys And Training

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Yearly audits. We recommend at the tail end of it, every year you go back and you do these surveys with your staff. How comfortable are you with our whistleblower policy? How comfortable do you feel that if you report someone doing something wrong, it will be addressed in a fair manner? Tom has put together some surveys that that we recommend and you you obviously people can add their own questions and send it out. And then just every year look at ask the people on the front lines, how are these working? Which rules if you have a rule that is being violated on a r more often than others, then either that means that you need to spend more time training, spend more resources on it, or change the rule. So let's say if you have a if your regulations require three former employers for reference checks, and you have a rule for four or three employers and two personal. If you're not meeting that goal, then you either need to put more staff on it, or you need to shave it back to what the regul if the regulations require three, then that's your floor. You cannot go lower than three. Or you need to do something else. But every year we recommend you go back and you look at those questions and you ask them. This creating a culture and having a child protection policy, it's an ongoing culture building process. It's not a one-and-done process.

SPEAKER_03 25:20

Yeah, and we we obviously need training up front, but you all and pro perhaps annual training, but we also recommend regular intervals of small training. So for perhaps a lunch and learn, perhaps an email that can go around saying, Here's something that happened to another organization. Have you thought about how this what how we would handle this? We recommend that that organizations get their team together on a regular basis and do a tabletop exercise. If this occurred to us tomorrow, how would we respond? How would we make sure that we are are communicating with our own employees, communicating with the family of a child who may have been injured, communicating with police, communicating with the public. You've got to be ready because when a crisis hits, you can't simply start trying to figuring out where the manual is at that point. You've got to have it in your head and you've got to know how to respond immediately.

SPEAKER_01 26:18

The analogy I use is if you're building muscle memory. As close as you can without having an actual crisis, you're building muscle memory for your staff.

SPEAKER_02 26:28

Like we said earlier, open communication seems to be the beginning. And what you're saying is it's always a point of topic. It's always got to be on the table. And it is that important. There's so many children had so many problems in the past. It's to keep that, it's so important. I think the bottom line here is if you've got children in your organization, you need to get the book, right? The protecting other people's children, 120 days of strong child protection policy. I love that. And it sounds like you've done an amazing detail-oriented job of putting that together so someone could just take the book and then build what they need and then reach out to you for any other advice or help.

Muscle Memory For Crisis Response

SPEAKER_03 27:04

Absolutely. We're all we're always available for more detailed coaching or consulting. Um really the way that we do, in addition to the book, of course, we do a lot of I wouldn't say I don't I avoid saying that we come in and tell you what to do because that's not our role. Our role in helping organizations create and implement these policies is to coach, to ask questions. And that way it's the organization that is owning the work. And we're just simply there to help guide and and support you.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

And we also have a i in between the book and the coaching that we do, we have online courses that people can look at that sort of go into more in-depth on particular topics such as screening or crisis response or doing an internal investigation. We have several topics that are more detailed than we could put in our book.

SPEAKER_02 28:03

Wow. Okay, so I think that you basically are a really good point of reference and contact for people who want to make sure that policy is at up to speed and accurate and helpful. How can my listeners connect with you and learn more from you? What would be the best place for that?

SPEAKER_01 28:21

I think YSO Academy is our sort of one-stop shop for everything. We have a website for the book called Protecting Other People's Children.com. But the we also have the book and the online courses and our emails at uh ysoacademy.com. Okay.

Book, Courses, And Coaching

SPEAKER_02 28:41

All right, fantastic. This has been a great conversation. I really appreciate your time. Lots of great information. And definitely listeners get the book if you need to make sure your policy is up to snuff right now. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Thanks for joining me today for this episode. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. And if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, you can connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take the next step with a digital strategist to help you grow your law firm, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to LawmarketingZone.com to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, thanks for listening to Leadership in Law Podcast, and be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode.

How To Connect And Final CTA

SPEAKER_00 29:42

Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Leadership in Law Podcast. Remember, you're not alone on this journey. There's a whole community of law promoters out there facing similar challenges and striving for the things of the most. Head over to our website at lawmarketingthold.com. And state of the book on the Little Step of the Road.com and link us to review on your favorite podcast platform. Until next time, keep linking with Big Development and keep growing your firm.