Now that nearly every U.S. diocese has a safe environment program to protect children against sexual abuse, attention needs to be focused on the programs' quality and effectiveness, which vary widely, a panel of experts told participants at the National Catholic Educational Association convention.

Two officials of the Boston Archdiocese, where the clergy sex abuse crisis first came to light, and a representative of a nonprofit group working to improve children's well-being addressed an April 12 workshop session at the NCEA convention in Baltimore.

Teresa Kettlekamp, executive director of the U.S. bishops' Office of Child and Youth Protection, also was scheduled to be at the workshop but was snowbound in Chicago. Her section of the workshop was presented by the other panelists.

The workshop took place the day after the release of a report prepared by Kettlekamp's office showing that most U.S. dioceses and Eastern Catholic eparchies were in full compliance with the bishops' "Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People," which mandates safe environment programs for all clergy, church employees and volunteers working with children.

Twenty-seven of the 29 dioceses and eparchies audited in 2006 were in full compliance, with only the Archdiocese of Cincinnati and the Diocese of Burlington, Vt., found to have not fully implemented the requirement to train all volunteers.

Two dioceses --- Lincoln, Neb., and Baker, Ore. --- and two eparchies --- Newton, Mass., for Melkite Catholics and Our Lady of Deliverance of Newark, N.J., for Syriac Catholics --- declined to participate in the latest audits. The rest of the 195 U.S. dioceses and eparchies had been audited previously and found in full compliance, so were not audited in 2006.

The mandate for safe environment programs --- just one aspect of the charter --- has resulted in 111 different programs in use in U.S. dioceses, according to Kettelcamp's report.

At the request of the bishops, Joan Cole Duffell, director of partnership development at the Seattle-based nonprofit Committee for Children, and Deacon Anthony Rizzuto, director of child advocacy for the Archdiocese of Boston, developed a document listing the "critical and core elements of personal safety education programs" aimed at preventing child sexual abuse.

Good programs should be "based on the most current research in prevention education and rigorously evaluated for effectiveness"; address "the subject of child sexual abuse within a general framework of safety"; and "teach children to stand up for themselves ... and to ask adults for help in difficult, uncomfortable or dangerous situations," the document said.

Although it might be "easier to find something, plunk it down in front of the child to read and then check off a box," Deacon Rizzuto said, the church "must rely on the evidence of the psychosocial sciences" in its safe environment programs.

"Talking About Touching," the Committee for Children's program adapted for use in the Boston Archdiocese, begins with a discussion of the basics of traffic safety, fire safety and gun safety and then talks about safe versus unsafe or unwanted touching.

Franciscan Sister Clare Bertero, director of religious education in the Archdiocese of Boston, said the biggest challenge to implementing the safe environment program in parishes has been finding time for it in the already packed religious education curriculum.

"We have them for so little time during the year," she said. "The one-size-fits-all approach was not going to work."

The archdiocese produced a variety of different models for introducing the material to various age groups and in different types of religious education settings, Sister Clare said, offering "alignment charts" to integrate the lessons with other archdiocesan religion curriculum guidelines.

The "next logical step" is to coordinate with U.S. religious education publishers on integrating safe environment materials into their curriculums, Deacon Rizzuto said. Work on developing national standards and norms began in November 2005, he said.

---CNS