This week, Safe Passage for Children of Minnesota Executive Director Crystal McNally and board member Kim Berg, a pediatric nurse practitioner at the Midwest Children’s Resource Center, visited the University of Minnesota’s Child Development Laboratory School to speak with staff about recognizing the physical signs of abuse in young children. Safe Passage is grateful to the Lab School for making space for the conversation during their staff development day.
The Lab School not only cares for kids in its licensed daycare center, but it also helps educate the people who go on to teach them. For Safe Passage, that made the visit a rare opportunity — a chance to speak directly with those who are shaping the next generation of early childhood educators.
McNally and Berg talked about Safe Passage’s mission and walked staff through an important tool: the TEN-4-FACESp bruising graphic. TEN-4-FACESp helps caregivers and professionals recognize bruising patterns that call for a closer look. Learn more about it here.
Safe Passage has pushed, and will continue to push, for legislation requiring Minnesota daycares and child care centers to post the TEN4FACESp poster because we believe educating parents and caregivers is key to keeping kids safe. Safe Passage and the Minnesota Coalition for Child Safety have worked with the original creator of TEN4FACESp to create a graphic that is understandable to the general public.
Young children, like infants, are the most vulnerable because they can’t tell us what happened to them, but sometimes their bodies do. The people who see these kids every day — child care staff, early educators — are often the first ones positioned to notice, which is exactly why Safe Passage wanted them to leave the room knowing it.
Teachers, school administrators, and school support staff are already named mandated reporters under Minnesota law — meaning the awareness these future educators build now matters the moment they step into a classroom of their own.
Safe Passage is grateful to the Child Development Laboratory School for the invitation and for its work on behalf of Minnesota’s youngest kids.