Disclaimer

This document (Safety First! Guidelines for BC School Off-site Experiences) is a reference guide that articulates recommended safety practices of relevance to teaching/leading off-site student experiences, outdoor pursuits/aquatics, and travel excursions. It has been developed to assist school authorities to create or revise related policy and procedures and schools and service providers to formulate site-specific safety guidelines and practices to help reduce the potential for injury on off-site experience related activities. This document is not intended to be policy in and of itself. The contents herein need to be adapted to suit the unique safety concerns of individual instructional/leadership situations. The sound, informed judgement of administrators, teachers, service providers and volunteers remains the most crucial tool to apply in advancing safe educational experiences for students.

While every reasonable effort has been made to provide accurate and useful information, neither the accuracy nor completeness of the material is guaranteed, and, therefore, the author, editors, and sponsoring partners will not be liable to any person or organization for any loss or damage of any nature which may be occasioned as a result of use of this guide and materials.

Note: Because each activity page assumes consideration of the content in earlier general sections, activity pages must not be reproduced without all of the relevant general sections.

Permitted Uses

Only licensed school districts/authorities in BC may use this resource to support their school activities. All others, whether involved in a not-for-profit or a for-profit endeavor, must secure written permission from the author to use this resource.

Licensed school districts/school authorities in BC may:

Use this resource in the development of policy, procedures and practices;

• Distribute the resource within the district/authority, through YouthSafe Outdoors website password protected logins, on staff-only limited parts of the licensee’s website and/or on school-level local intranets; and/or, through the provision of print copies or ordering of print copies from YSO.
• Provide the activity-specific page(s) of direct relevance to the services to be provided by a specific service provider to that provider for the sole purposes of clarifying expectations and contracting for the service.

Licensed school districts in BC may not:

• Modify or change this document (due to its research base);
• Put this resource or any part thereof on a publicly accessible website or otherwise distribute any or all of it to individuals or organizations outside of the school; or
• Claim copyright for itself for this document or any derivative documents based on this document, including adding any school district identifiers.