Office of Child and Youth Protection

• Boys and girls must be assigned separate rooms. 
• Chaperones must be in rooms separate from the youth.
• Parents and children may share a room.  No other combination of relatives is allowed (e.g., uncle/nephew; grandma/granddaughter, etc.).
• No unrelated minor may share a room with an adult.
• High school seniors who are 18 may share a room with their peers, however, this exception ends with graduation. 
• Chaperones should monitor rooms until everyone is asleep.  Supervision may be necessary throughout the night. 

•  The ratio for chaperones to children is 1:10 for day trips and 1:7 for activities lasting more than 12 hours. 
• Two or more adults must be present for events involving children.
• Chaperones must be 21 or older.

Priority should be given to hiring a professional transportation service.  However, in some instances, adult volunteer drivers are needed. 

A volunteer driver is an individual that uses his/her personally owned vehicle for parish or school business. The diocese has the following recommendations for the use of volunteer drivers:  • Reduce the use of all vehicles to the absolute minimum. 

• Reduce the use of all vehicles to the absolute minimum.  Necessity should be the watchword.
• Drivers should be over 21 years of age.  Age and health as well as physical and mental condition should be considered.
• Drivers must have a valid driver’s license.  
• When transporting minors in a vehicle, a combination of either two safe environment complaint adults to one child or one safe environment compliant adult to two or more minors is the rule. No adult should be driving alone with a minor in their car unless they are the child’s parent or guardian. An exception is made for parents/children. 

• Whether a teen can drive themselves to and from an event is left to that teen’s parent’s discretion.  However, if within the parameters of that event, the group goes out for ice cream, for example, that teen must have written parental consent to then ride with another adult or group, or drive themselves.  
• If a teen drives within the parameters of an event, that teen is NOT permitted to carry passengers unless the passenger is a sibling.  
• Teen drivers must have a valid driver’s license.

• Each occupant must have and use a seat belt.  
• No one may ride in the bed of pick-up trucks.  
• The use of 15 passenger vans is prohibited. If renting a 12-passenger van, it must be driven by a diocesan or parish employee who has been cleared through the Diocesan Risk Manager.  
• If driving in a caravan, all vehicles must depart from that same destination and arrive at the same destination. Any stops along the journey must be planned and coordinated for the entire caravan. No driver should make his/her own path.