SAFETY IS THE TABLE STAKES
Youth Protection — How We (and FIRST) Keep the Team Safe
Working with kids is a privilege, and FIRST takes it seriously. Every adult who interacts with our team is expected to complete the FIRST Youth Protection Program (YPP) requirements. Here’s what that means in plain English.
Coaches, mentors, regular volunteers, parents who help out at meetings or events — every adult around the team is in scope. This isn’t paperwork for one head coach. It’s a real system, applied across every adult who’s part of the team.
Who Needs to Complete YPP
Anyone in an adult role with the team is in scope: coaches, lead mentors, mentor-helpers, regular event volunteers, and adult Program Delivery Partners. Once an adult is around the team enough to be considered a regular participant, they need to be both screened and trained — not just the head coach.
Two Required Pieces
YPP isn’t one thing — it’s two. Both required. Both repeated each season.
REQUIREMENT 1
Background Check (Screening)
Yes — FIRST runs a formal US screening process for every adult who participates regularly. You submit info through your FIRST Dashboard, FIRST runs the check, and you’re cleared once the result comes back clean. Florida volunteers complete the standard FIRST screening.
REQUIREMENT 2
Youth Protection Training
A short series of videos covering risk situations, safe interaction guidelines, and reporting. Each video is under 5 minutes. The full series runs roughly 40–50 minutes total and is taken once per season.
What the Training Covers
The YPP training and the YPP Code of Conduct that backs it up walk adults through five core topics:
Gracious Professionalism
FIRST’s core ethic. The same value that runs through every program, applied to how adults treat each other and the students they work with.
Recognizing signs of abuse, bullying, and harassment
What to watch for in students, in peer mentors, and in adult interactions. The warning signs are taught explicitly so adults can intervene before something escalates.
Safe-interaction guidelines
No one-on-one private contact with minors. Two-deep adult presence at all times. Specific rules around physical contact, communication channels, transportation, and social-media interaction.
Reporting requirements when something is off
Who to tell. How fast. What documentation to keep. What happens after a report is filed. The point is to make reporting easy and obvious, not optional.
Mental-health awareness for youth participants
Recognizing when a student is struggling, how to respond in the moment, and when (and how) to bring in additional support or family.
How to Report a Concern
If you ever see or experience something at a meeting or event that doesn’t sit right, FIRST has formal channels — available to students, parents, and adult volunteers alike.
Quick reference — copy this somewhere you can find it
Online: the Youth Protection Concerns form on the FIRST YPP page
Phone: (603) 206-2050
Email: safety@firstinspires.org
CONCERNS INCLUDE
Suspected abuse, bullying, harassment, discrimination, questionable behavior, or any violation of the FIRST Code of Conduct. If something feels wrong, file it — let the safety team make the determination.
On Our Team
Every adult mentor and regular volunteer on our team will complete FIRST’s YPP training and screening before working with students one-on-one or in small groups. Parents who attend meetings as participants — per our this is not a drop-off program policy — will at minimum complete the training.
NO WORKAROUND
The kids’ safety comes first.
FIRST has built a real system to back it up — screening, training, and reporting channels that work whether the concern comes from a student, a parent, or another mentor. We use it.
Read the official policy
The full FIRST Youth Protection Program documentation lives on firstinspires.org. Bookmark it.