A new policy review committee for the Anna Maria Island Community Center is tasked with making some recommendations that the center’s executive board can “like.”
One likely recommendation will be that the center keep a fairly new rule that prohibits staff from communicating with center youth on Facebook or Twitter.
Allegations of inappropriate relations between an Anna Maria Community Center employee, who resigned last month, and youth participants led to the formation of the committee. The committee consists of experts who work in childcare, the law, insurance, nonprofits and youth programming. Center executive director Pierrette Kelly described the group as a “very good team.”
One issue the group will be examining is staff and volunteer use of social media, such as Twitter, Facebook, and other quick-communications tools, such as texting and instant messaging.
Already the center staff and volunteers have been instructed not to communicate with youth members via social networking programs.
But a more detailed, long-term policy is needed, according to executive board members.
Other organizations and institutions have tackled the issue. An online database of social media policies lists dozens of organizations — companies, school districts, nonprofits and churches — that have adopted social networking policies.
Most of the corporate policies deal with restricting employees from posting workplace information, including disparaging remarks. But policies for organizations that deal with youth also restrict communication between adult staff and volunteers and minors.
A model policy, according to both experts in youth programming and technology, is the YMCA’s standard social networking policy, which:
• Prohibits the use of photos, logos or images of the Y or its programs on staff’s personal websites, blogs, Facebook pages, YouTube, Flickr and other sites.
• Forbids staff from initiating “outside contact with members or program participants” and states that “under no circumstances should an employee encourage access or provide access information to his or her personal website or blog to a teen member or program participant under the age of 18.”
• Requires staff to “support and certainly not harm or ridicule the YMCA’s image or mission and prohibits Facebook interaction that “violates the YMCA’s policies on harassment or discrimination.”
Some school districts have adopted similar policies for educators and staff, but not without resistance and lawsuits. In Manatee County, the teachers union has sued over a social networking policy that would restrict what educators could post on their personal Facebook pages.
Center assistant director Scott Dell observed, “There are a lot of lawsuits out there on infringement on constitutional rights.”
Members of the center’s executive board said there have been struggles over policies, but they noted that the center is not a government institution and is not unionized.
Board members also said that the YMCA policy is comprehensive.