Standard 79 The Crisis Plan
Greetings from the Accreditation Office!
After spending all of 2007 talking about the nuts and bolts of a good crisis plan, it became a required standard in 2008. To date, there are still many Teen Challenge organizations that have not developed a crisis plan so as to be compliant with this standard. Some have downloaded the Crisis Plan Workbook that is available at www.staff.teenchallengeusa.com, printed it out, placed it in a note book and have presented it as their crisis plan. The work book is not a crisis plan but a guide to creating one. If your Teen Challenge organization has not yet put together a crisis plan and is scheduled for your accreditation review this year, please download the workbook and begin working on your plan. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me at dougl@teenchallengeusa.com. I will be more then happy to help.
You never know when a crisis will come up that will require a well thought out response and process to deal with it. Recently, a contractor who was donating his time on a project at one of our Teen Challenge organizations, made a tragic error in judgement which cost him his life. The news was all over Google and read something like “Worker found dead at a Teen Challenge Ministry.” The media was all over this and so were people’s comments, both positive and negative, in their blogs. The Teen Challenge organization implemented their plan and handled the media inquiries very well. Not to take away from the tragedy of the worker who was found dead, but the Teen Challenge ministry where this took place was able to show that they had exercised due diligence and kept in tact the good name they had spent so many years building in the community. No telling how this might have turned out for the Teen Challenge name had they tried to fly by the seat of their pants. So, get your plan ready and your staff trained to implement it.
His Blessing!
