[Youth-outreach] FW: MENTOR Minute: President Obama Signs SafetyNET Extension

[Riccobono, Mark]

Jedi,

Thank you for your question, it is an important one to discuss
particularly on this list.  The short answer to the question is yes and
no.

It has been long standing policy of the National Federation of the Blind
that we do background checks for mentors serving in our national
educational programs.  These checks are run through our Human Resources
office so that individuals managing programs will not know the exact
content of the background check--just that a thumbs up or thumbs down is
given. By the time we get to the background check step, our potential
mentors have been screened through a number of other gates so this is
simply one final protection for the Federation. Background checks are an
important step for the organization to protect the young people that
parents entrust us with in our programs.  These background checks have
not yet required fingerprints.

Background checks requiring fingerprints tend to be somewhat more
comprehensive.  We have utilized checks that require fingerprints in our
national mentoring program.  In that case, states have operated local
programs where blind adults work one on one with blind young
people--some of whom were under 18.  You can understand in that case
that it is a program of the Federation but the mentor has a significant
amount of freedom and spends a great deal of time alone with their
mentee.  Therefore, the do diligence is even more significant.

This is why Treva sent the information to the list.  We urge affiliates
to use background checks in their mentoring programs and encourage
systems to collect and protect that information.  We have worked very
hard at the national level to never disclose why a mentor may or may not
have been chosen for a program.  Sometimes it might be due to a flag in
the background check, sometimes it might be because we needed to select
mentors to have the right mix, sometimes there is another
reason--frequently there are multiple factors. Our goal is always to not
let that data be spread around the Federation.  

Some may feel the background step is over kill because "we all know each
other."  That is exactly the type of problem we are trying to avoid.  If
we take that point of view and there is a problem that gets
investigated, our programs would be eliminated.  We can not defend the
failure to gather the best data possible, in cluding using best
practices, in selecting mentors for our programs.

Sincerely,
Mark Riccobono