Improved Threat Assessment, Incident Management and Prevention in a Changing World
In an effort to improve and maintain student safety and violence prevention, the Diocese of Toledo Schools has launched an online risk management, incident reporting and prevention platform called TIPS. The TIPS platform equips all students, parents, faculty, staff and others to safely and anonymously or non‐anonymously report concerning behaviors and suspicious incidents.
An award‐winning suite of web‐based risk management tools developed by the privately held organization Awareity, TIPS empowers individuals to anonymously report suspicious activities involving bullying, cyberbullying, weapons, drug/alcohol use, school vandalism, threats of violence, suicide risk, sexual harassment, abuse, truancy and numerous other incidents.
“TIPS is helping our school administrators within the Diocese to become more aware of student safety incidents and concerning behaviors within our schools. We strive to provide a safe learning environment for all Diocese students, but it can be difficult if situations are brewing that we don’t know about,” said Frank DiLallo, prevention and intervention specialist for the Diocese.
If someone has information about concerning behaviors or suspicious activities that may warrant concern for the safety of students, faculty or staff, the individual can simply access TIPS from the Diocese school websites, select their school and anonymously report the information, Superintendent Chris Knight explained.
Once an incident is reported in TIPS, the appropriate personnel from the appropriate school and the home office are notified so administrators can investigate immediately and do the right things based on the each situation. TIPS makes it easier for safety team members to coordinate actions and securely share information during investigations, intervention and prevention efforts and other actions to ensure legal due diligence and compliance with state and federal requirements. All actions are easily documented and team members can easily see all incidents for their school/district, review individual incident reports, set up automated reminders
for themselves or other team members, and search/review related incidents in real‐time.
Recent studies have revealed that although 80% or more of concerning behaviors and suspicious incidents are witnessed; only 10‐ 20% of these incidents are being reported, mostly due to the lack of a true anonymous incident reporting option.
“Kids just want bullying and violence to stop. However, is can be difficult to know who to turn to in complicated situations, especially if a student feels like telling someone will lead to retaliation or make things worse. TIPS is helping empower these students and helping schools become more aware of threats, concerns and incidents, and in turn helping schools build a stronger and safer learning climate ongoing,” says founder and CEO of Awareity, Rick Shaw.
The TIPS platform is being used in multiple school districts to identify, prevent and effectively intervene in threatening behaviors, while reducing costs for documentation and improving ongoing awareness and accountability. The most comprehensive incident management platform available today, TIPS has been implemented by a wide‐range of schools, including colleges, small K‐5 private schools, rural public schools and large public schools with over 40,000 students.
According to DiLallo, “We are thrilled to be able to provide such a valuable tool to our schools. Not only can TIPS save time and money for our schools, it has the potential to also save lives.”
About Awareity:
Awareity helps leading organizations prevent the preventable and transform the status quo. Awareity is reinventing the way schools improve safety and helping organizations prevent regulatory failures, compliance fines, lawsuits, privacy breaches, safety disconnects, operational challenges, ethical lapses, incident reporting failures, workplace violence and more. Awareity offers an innovative and cost‐effective platform to connect the dots, eliminate embarrassing gaps and realize a better bottom line.
Contact:
Katie Johnson
402.730.0077
info@awareity.com
www.awareity.com
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