What is unique about the YSO Safety First! Guidelines?

Safety First! is unique in several ways: 

• Scope of Resources: YSO's Safety First! (SF!) provides essential information and guidance for off-site activities and outdoor pursuits/aquatics of relevance to any and all youth program activities. Each Safety First! document is customized to fit the jurisdiction and context it is intended for (e.g., school field trips, community-based programs).
  
  
• Underlying Assumptions/Models: Safety First! provides an exceptionally well-researched, user-friendly articulation of the standard of care, and tools to facilitate legally defensible risk assessment and decision-making. SF! is built on a competency-based model where minimum requirements (e.g., leader skill and experience, first aid capacity, supervision ratios) match the assessed risk of the outing vs. reliance on required external leader certifications and fixed ratios.  SF! promotes high adherence by reflecting safe, reasonable, attainable, ethical and sustainable practices.
  
  
• Implementation Support:  YSO's integrated support resources have been developed for all the key roles in the education or recreation system, to be used as the basis for policy development, procedural implementation, professional development training, and for day-to-day use in the program and at home.  End-users remain completely free to choose which of the supplementary trip planning, leadership and instructional resources they use, when, and in what manner to meet the standard of care articulated in Safety First!

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