#generalsafety

[firetruckoftheday]

Morristown Fire Department Engine 1 by Triborough Via Flickr: 2007 Spartan/General Safety/Rosenbauer

[firetruckoftheday]

Morristown Fire Department Engine 2 by Triborough Via Flickr: 2005 Spartan/General Safety/Rosenbauer

[beardedmilkshakestudent-blog]

OSHA Courses in Visakhapatnam

Boost your career in workplace safety with internationally recognized OSHA 30-Hour Training in Vizag—now available through flexible online and e-learning modes.

Whether you're aiming to specialize in General Industry Safety or master Construction Safety protocols, this comprehensive program equips you with the latest OSHA standards and practical insights.

Ideal for safety officers, site supervisors, and aspiring HSE professionals, our OSHA courses in Visakhapatnam are guided by certified trainers with real-world expertise.

Enroll today and get globally aligned safety training from Green World Group, a trusted name in HSE consultancy and training. Don’t miss this opportunity to enhance compliance skills and workplace safety leadership.

Contact: Mr. Bhuvan

[email protected] 

[phone]

Visit us: https://greenwgroup.co.in/osha-training-certification/

[coreehs]

On the occasion of National Fire Service Week 2025, a Fire & General Safety Awareness Training session was successfully conducted at Santapada High School. Students learned vital life-saving techniques, fire prevention measures, and emergency response practices, led by our experienced HSE Trainer. Let's build a safer tomorrow by educating today!

Safety Staffing Services - CORE EHS

Avail industrial safety staffing services, strength onsite safety supervision, transform safety culture with certified safety professional f

[coreehs]

On the occasion of National Fire Service Week 2025, a Fire & General Safety Awareness Training session was successfully conducted at Santapada High School. Students learned vital life-saving techniques, fire prevention measures, and emergency response practices, led by our experienced HSE Trainer.

https://coreehs.com/safety-staffing-services/

[usabsportdevelopment-blog]

Giving Kids the Competitive Edge 

By Jim Ronai MS, PT, ATC, CSCS Member, USA Baseball Medical/Safety Advisory Committee

Organized youth sports provide children with opportunities to learn on a multitude of levels. The impact that youth sports can have on a child's physical, social and physiological development is significant and long lasting. For many children, youth baseball is their first exposure to organized sports. In addition to providing children with the fundamentals of our nation's pastime, organizers of youth baseball have the opportunity to develop a sports program that promotes general athleticism and a foundation for lifelong healthy social and physical habits.

FOUNDATIONS OF A SUCCESSFUL PROGRAM:

The success of any youth sports program is contingent upon the organization's mission and core values. Most children will participate in a variety of sports as they grow. It is important to offer programs that are well rounded and provide participants with low-pressure opportunities to experience success.

Athleticism before sports specific skill development:

Developing athleticism before sport specific skills provides children with the basic foundations of all sports. Flexibility, speed, agility and strength are a few examples of skills that are required for participation in all sports. Integrating general athletic skills into practices and pre-game activities ensures that participants leave the facility having improved as athletes.

Healthy kids make healthy adults:

Every athlete can't be an all star, but there are more important aspects associated with youth athletics than winning or making an all star team. The life lessons associated with participation in athletics are significant. Life long healthy social and physical habits need to be established early. Development of life skills such as the ability to work with others, cope with negative outcomes and accept instruction from an individual in an authoritative role like a coach are benefits of youth sports that last a lifetime. Teaching individuals to be comfortable with exercise, exercise environments and in competitive situations as kids makes these environments less intimidating to them as adults. People tend to gravitate towards activities that are more comfortable to them. Adults need to be more involved in wellness based exercise activities as methods promoting health and improved long term quality of life. Establishing these behaviors early improves the chances of them becoming a long standing way of life.

Perfect practice makes perfect:

Like most people, children learn through repetition. Developing routines for developing athletic skills like flexibility, running speed development and agility are just as important to kids as taking infield or batting practice. In order to successfully field, hit and throw, players should be able to run, jump and rapidly change directions without sustaining an injury. Educating young athletes about the essentials of athletic skills and correctly reinforcing those skills at regular intervals provides participants with simple, consistent opportunities to learn and improve as athletes both mentally and physically.

Knowledge is power

Understanding the basic concepts of what it takes to be an athlete empowers a young athlete with a powerful tool for growth and improvement. Once athletes understand the rationale behind the use of athletic enhancement drills like form running, flexibility exercises and agility drills as well as how and when to use them, their potential to improve as athletes first and subsequently ball players is limitless. Teaching young people how to think, move and train like an athlete are fundamental steps towards them improving and reaching their potential as baseball players.

Make it fun!

For many young people, sports programs like youth baseball are their first experiences in an organized or team format. In most cases, these programs are also a young person's first experience in a coach/athlete situation. Therefore, it is imperative that early experiences are enjoyable. Activities that deemphasize winning and losing or statistical success provide participants with a low pressure, low stress opportunity to play and develop. Creating situations that present an equal challenge for all, make more participants feel as though they belong and have an equal opportunity to succeed. For example, teaching and drilling a 9 and 10 year baseball team in a 10 station circuit of age appropriate agility, running and medicine ball drills gives all children a chance to experience success on many levels. Activities like these enable all participants to improve as baseball players by improving in a multitude of athletic skills. Since each station is timed and completed by each athlete at their own pace, all athletes will experience the success of completing the activity and will not be subject to the disappointment of losing or finishing behind others.

The Seven Elements of Athleticism

Developing athletes requires a plan for improvement. Athleticism is the foundation of every sport. Without the ability to improve as an overall athlete, individuals can not improve as players in any sport. Practices and pre-game activities need to include components of each of the 7 elements of athleticism: Flexibility, Strength, Agility, Speed, Core Balance, Coordination and Power are essential ingredients that distinguish an athlete from an individual who participates in athletic activities. Effective developmental and reinforcement of these critical athletic skills requires knowledgeable coaching staff, efficient practice routines and efficient pre-game drills and activities. Coaching plays a critical role in assisting athletes to develop the enthusiasm, mental discipline and desire to acquire these skills.

Tools and Methods

Programs that promote general athleticism in can serve large groups of young people with minimal investments of time or money. In order for programs to efficiently serve a large number of athletes, they must be well organized. Standard program components should include systematic warm up, flexibility and form running routines. In order to maximize learning and assimilation of skills and concepts, these routines should change as little as possible over the course of the program. Utilization of anaerobic or aerobic circuit training is an extremely productive and time efficient method of exposing participants to the 7 essential elements of athleticism. Circuits that utilize equipment such as agility ladders, step hurdles, jump ropes, cones, domes, dot mats and medicine balls are portable and cost effective. They offer coaches and participants a multitude of drill options and levels of difficulty based on the baseline skill levels of the participants. Coaches can very easily customize circuits based on age and sport specific variables like aerobic recovery requirements, coordination/balance demands and gross/ fine motor demands. Work to rest ratios can be easily manipulated to accommodate sport specific demands and the changing fitness levels of the participants.

The Bottom Line

The intent of organized youth sports programs should be to provide participants with a fun and stimulating opportunity to facilitate their physical and psychosocial development. The measure of success of youth sports programs should not be measured in terms of wins, losses and all star team appearances. Successful programs teach participants how to interact with authority figures like coaches or in group/team situations. Athleticism a key to developing well rounded young athletes and lays a framework for life long healthy habits. Youth sports programs that emphasize fun and the fundamentals of general athleticism before sport specific skill provide participants with a healthy foundation for future development.

Jim Ronai MS, PT, ATC, CSCS is the Director of Physical Therapy and Sports Medicine at Rehabilitation Associates, Inc. in Connecticut. He is the founder of Jim Ronai's Competitive Edge, LLC, speed, agility and strength program and a member of the USA Baseball Medical and Safety Advisory Committee.

[usabsportdevelopment-blog]

How Aggressive Should Players Be?

By Herndon P. Harding, Jr., M.D. Medical Director Florida Hospital Center for Behavioral Health Member USA Baseball Medical & Safety Advisory Group

In past articles for USA Baseball News, the Medical/Safety Advisory Committee has addressed issues of aggression. For fairly apparent reasons, it seemed appropriate to address aggression again.

One of the established traits that indicate that a person is likely to be a successful athlete is the degree to which he/she is aggressive. There are even paper and pencil tests that measure aggressivity that some professional clubs use as scouting tools. However, it is important to understand what being appropriately aggressive means, because "being too aggressive" is often a description indicating a problem player. Some things are obviously too aggressive; throwing at a batter's head, charging the mound with a bat in hand.

Yet brushing back is a necessary part of the game, and there needs to be some remedy when a pitcher oversteps the bounds when staking-out his strike zone. Several common sense perspectives can be used to help define what is too much aggression:

1) If direct physical harm was obviously the intent, and

2) The objective served by the action could have been accomplished by methods less likely to harm another.

Of course, acknowledging those simple standards is much easier than applying them day to day. Who is to say if there was "obvious" intent to ham? The pitcher who beans someone shrugs his shoulders, or looks surprised when the batter goes down. Well, maybe it was an accident but why not have a severe penalty anyhow and let the pitcher's team pay for the "accident"; intent wouldn't even be the issue. This would only work if the penalty really mattered.

Getting one base obviously isn't always much of a deterrent: Why not make it two? I bet the number of hit batters would quickly drop if runners were automatically put into scoring positions. Indeed, has anyone looked at how often batters don't get accidentally hit when it would advance runners? What does this have to do with whether or not a player is too aggressive? At every level a player's play is formed within the context of the game's rules as exercised by parents, coaches and umpires. Even at youth levels of play, I've seen coaches encouraging a pitcher to retaliate. Less directly, through modeling - the unconscious learning of behaviors by observing them practicing them - children learn to act like the adults around them. If adults let their aggression get out of hand, so will their children. It's not what they're told is right that matters. Talk is cheap. It's by beholding that we become changed. This is particularly true when aggression is rewarded.

If inappropriate aggression is discouraged or punished then that, too, is observed and decreases the modeling of aggression. When parents and coaches remain cool (if they are respected), then cool is cool. Modeling appropriate aggression helps individuals lead others to better behaviors. But what about organized leadership? Baseball, and sport in general, is a way people try to improve themselves. Where parts of the game fail or contradict that development of virtue, those parts should be changed. If baseball as an institution wants to clarify what is too much aggression, it can.

Examine what has gone on in professional hockey over the past few years. Maybe it will take criminal charges for organized baseball to figure out that there is a difference between baseball and basebrawl.

[usabsportdevelopment-blog]

Types of Background Checks on Volunteers 

Every reasonable effort should be made to protect youth sports participants from adults in the program who have a history of unacceptable criminal activity. In a 2014 study, an estimated 12.93 percent of all volunteers screened had a criminal background record, and 3.2 percent of would-be coaches had convictions involving sex offenses, violence or other felonies. Eighteen percent of these individuals committed their crime outside of their current state of residency. (Source: Southeastern Security Consultants, Inc.)

For starters, background checks on volunteers, especially those with repeated access to youth players, are an important part of the volunteer screening program in youth sports. All volunteer staff should be notified prior to acceptance of their duties that they will be subject to a favorable background check and must provide their consent via a volunteer application. Such notification should also explain the steps that are being taken to safeguard their privacy and rights should any unfavorable information be found. Only one league administrator should be in charge of collecting and reviewing volunteer applications, receiving the results of the background checks and making the disqualification decisions in order to reduce the chances of a release of confidential information. An unfavorable background check should disqualify a volunteer from participation if it falls within a sports organization's predetermined, written disqualification criteria.

The term "background check" represents a broad category of different types of checks that can be obtained from various sources. The quality of the source varies greatly and decisions made solely on price tend to result in less than satisfactory results from both the protection offered to youth and the amount of administrative work placed on the sports organization. The following criteria can be used when analyzing various sources:

Cost: ranges from free to $70 per volunteer depending on the accuracy and thoroughness of the search and the services that are offered by the provider. Lower-cost sources are limited to inferior national database searches, omit important county courthouse searches and have unfiltered results, and offer immediate or 24-hour results.

Geographic region searched: varies by county, state or national database.

Accuracy and thoroughness: varies greatly depending on the input procedure of the source, how often the source is updated, if the source is the most likely one to yield results for a particular volunteer based on his/her address history, the number of sources that are checked, if the social security number is verified and if an address trace is performed.

Waiting period to receive results: varies from immediate to an 84-day waiting period to view results.

Your administrative time required per volunteer: varies from thirty seconds to several minutes per volunteer record to be checked. This does not include the additional time to interpret raw court data.

All criminal records checked? Some sources may not reveal all types of criminal records as some are limited to sexual crimes only.

Your legal liabilities for mistakes made: varies depending on the services that are outsourced to a background check provider. Liabilities can result from mismatch between volunteer and record received, improper interpretation of record, Fair Credit Reporting Act violations for failure to provide required legal notices, illegal use of information protected by First Offender Act and by slander actions resulting from inappropriate release of confidential information. Even though these potential liabilities exist, the absence of any reasonable attempt to screen unsuitable volunteers presents a far more serious vulnerability to legal liability.

SEXUAL OFFENDER REGISTRY CHECKS (SOR)

SOR checks are currently available for free on the internet at www.nsopw.gov, which accesses all 50 state sex offender registries.

The advantages of SOR's are that they are free, do not require permission from the volunteer, take very little administrative time to input names, the results are immediate and the Fair Credit Reporting Act and related administrative notice burdens do not apply.

The disadvantages of SOR's is that there is no Social Security Number verification to assure the volunteer has not provided an alias, there is no consistency from state to state on registry requirements (i.e. some states require only violent sex offenders to register, missing are the nonviolent sex offenders), the input source is a third party (instead of being input automatically as a part of the judicial process), the website may not be frequently updated and most importantly is that the SOR only reveals sex offenders, while many other serious crimes should be of concern such as murder, robbery, felony drugs, etc.

On the other hand, thorough criminal background checks (as opposed to SOR's) will provide all misdemeanor and felony information (not just sex offenses) that a sports organization may want to take into account in the disqualification process. Criminal background checks show offenses that go back a minimum of seven years, but much longer in most cases. Also, criminal background checks do not rely on third parties to enter information into the database as this happens automatically as part of the judicial process.

LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT

Local law enforcement is often contacted as a potential "free" source of criminal background checks. However, local law enforcement agencies are increasingly declining such requests due to limited manpower. When making requests to local law enforcement, you should specifically inquire as to which source will be used to run the criminal background check.

If law enforcement uses a single county record check as a source, this will not reveal criminal offenses which may have occurred in a different county. If they use a state database as a source (compiled from single county courthouse records), this will not reveal criminal offenses which may have occurred in a different state. Generally, local law enforcement does not confirm information provided by the volunteer (Name/dob/SSN/address) and provides raw court data with no interpretation of information.

The National Crime Information Center (NCIC) electronic database is not available to local law enforcement for the purposes of running background checks as the NCIC database can only be used if a crime has been committed.

THIRD-PARTY VENDORS

Various third-party vendors offer criminal background checks on a fee basis that range from "do it yourself" low-cost national database checks to "full service" higher-cost, multiple-source checks with Social Security Number verification, address trace and other add-ons.

Before choosing a third-party vendor, you need to assess the cost and services based on the following basic criteria:

Cost: ranges from $2.50 to $23.00 per volunteer.

Your administrative time required per volunteer: varies per vendor. Some vendors require you to input data (name, addresses, SSN) into their online screens and to retrieve results. Some are set up whereby the volunteer can submit their own information to trigger the background check. The "do it yourself" model can take several minutes of administrative time per volunteer. On the other hand, other vendors may simply require that you fax the signed volunteer applications, which collect the appropriate information, and they handle all input and retrieval of results.

Waiting period to receive results: Most vendors take up to five days to receive results unless a national database is the only source that is to be checked. Results from a national database search can be instant.

Social Security Number verification: This check is used to verify the identity of the applicant. A match between the name that is provided on the application and the name that is on file for the Social Security Number that was provided on the application protects against the applicant's providing a wrong Social Security Number in order to evade a background check.

Address trace: verifies addresses listed on the volunteer application over the past seven years with database records as a basis for determining the best sources of records to search for a particular location or court jurisdiction.

Social Security Number address trace: pulls prior addresses from public records with utility companies and credit card bureaus that have the applicant's Social Security Number on file. This service provides an independent source to verify past addresses that may not be listed on an application.

Intelligent choice of sources to be searched: based on the prior addresses indicated in No. 3 or No. 4. Above, the third-party vendor can make an intelligent choice of which county courthouse records should be searched based on the most recent and/or longest county of residence.

Single county courthouse check: Many vendors will send a researcher to check for criminal records in the county courthouse or courthouses where the applicant has lived most recently and/or for the longest period of time.

National database check: A number of national sources have negotiated agreements with a large percentage of county and state databases throughout the U.S. to collect criminal background records by electronic means. National databases collect a huge number of records on a national level to help detect predators and other criminals that move from one state to the next. However, many experts believe that they should not be the only source of a background check since many counties and some states refuse to share their information, and those that do share information may update records with a 60-day lag time. In the past, many organizations relied on low-cost national database registry checks. Studies indicated that relying solely on the national database missed approximately 50 percent of criminal records that would disqualify an applicant. This trend has changed in recent years as new standards for background checks have been established by parks and recreation agencies and USOC SafeSport, which require the use of state and country checks in addition to national database checks.

Sexual Offender Registry checks (SOR): An additional search may be provided based on a national database that combines records from all 50 state sexual offender registries.

Terrorist database check.

Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) compliance: Compliance with the FCRA requires the following steps to be taken:

First Offender Act compliance: Third-party vendors can offer an additional service to filter out any criminal record that is protected under the First Offender Act. Failure to comply can result in civil liabilities for the individuals within the sports organization administering the criminal background checks.

Disqualification decision -- Green Light/Red Light: Some third-party vendors will provide the additional service of determining whether the volunteer is disqualified based upon your predetermined disqualification criteria. (The vendors can assist with the development of these criteria on your behalf.) Transferring the disqualification decision to the third-party vendor shields the sports organization and its administrators from liabilities arising out of a mismatch between the volunteer and the record received, improper interpretation of the nature of a criminal record and resulting wrongful disqualification decision, FCRA compliance, First Offender Act compliance and potential slander actions resulting from intentional or accidental release of confidential information.

Obtain a signature from the volunteer authorizing the criminal background check to be performed. This authorization should be a part of the volunteer application.

Those volunteers who are to be disqualified based on their background check must receive a copy of the background check report, the "Summary of Your Rights under the FCRA" document and a written communication that they have been disqualified based on their background check.

Failure to comply with the FCRA can result in civil penalties and liabilities for the individuals within the sports organization administering the criminal background checks. This liability can be shifted to the third-party vendor if they offer the FCRA compliance service.

Please note that the potential liabilities for these mistakes are outweighed by the potential liability for not making a reasonable attempt to screen out unsuitable volunteers.

Are FBI fingerprint checks the ultimate solution to catch predators with stolen identities?

Much attention has been given to the fact that it is possible for a predator to assume the identity and Social Security Number of another person in order to avoid detection.

It is assumed that the non-fingerprint based criminal background vendors will let these predators slip between the cracks and that only FBI 10-fingerprint checks will detect their true criminal backgrounds. These assumptions are not necessarily true.

First, some of the quality vendors of non-fingerprint based criminal background checks have checks in place to protect against fabricated or stolen Social Security Numbers. Such vendors can run a Social Security verification to confirm that the applicant/volunteer is indeed attached to the SSN.

Such a verification will return the names of others who have used that SSN, DOB, age, historical addresses, time span for those addresses and counties of residence. This verification information can then be compared to the same information that was indicated on the volunteer application. Any discrepancies would be a red flag for a stolen identity.

Second, while the FBI 10-fingerprint check can be an almost-foolproof verification of the volunteer's identity, it has several drawbacks. The major drawback is that the turnaround time on receiving the results can range from six to 12 weeks or more. It is not uncommon for the fingerprint card to be returned for re-fingerprinting due to a smudge. Generally, in addition to the charge for the FBI check, an additional charge is levied by the agency collecting the fingerprint. Also, it could be cumbersome to coordinate the fingerprinting with the schedules of the volunteers. In addition, the FBI database shows arrests only and does not indicate the disposition of the case. Another limitation is that the FBI database only has approximately 60 million records on file.

SUMMARY

There is no one best type of background check that will offer the best results across the board on all criteria. The background check standard for youth sports volunteers that is being developed through most common practices includes: A search for all misdemeanors and felonies in the applicant's longest most recent county of residence along with a national criminal record and sex offender search.

Naturally, the most accurate and thorough types of background checks tend to be the most expensive. Individual sports organizations will need to weigh their budgetary constraints against what the courts are requiring in terms of "due diligence" when screening volunteers.

REFERENCES

Southeastern Security Consultants Inc. (SSCI) and DMP Consulting, Inc. co-owners of Operation TLC² Making Communities Safe www.operationtlc2.org.

National Association Of Professional Background Screeners: There's No Such Thing as a National Database for Background Checks; Background Checks Performed By Professional Background Screeners Best Serve The Interests Of Employers, Consumers, And The Public; No Secret That FBI Database Is Incomplete.

Courtesy of John M. Sadler, JD, CIC; Member of the USA Baseball Medical & Safety Advisory Committee; President Sadler Sports & Recreation Insurance