RAMS forms are a necessary administration part of running any ministry event these days. It is a great opportunity to reflect on your events, before running them, and consider all the things that could go wrong, and ways to both avoid any trouble and have plans for should anything happen. While paperwork is admin, grabbing your team and brainstorming, discussing and coming up with plans as a team can be a great exercise and way to ensure everyone knows what to do, what to be looking out for and ways to mitigate things. You may even decide the event you had in mind shouldn’t go ahead in the form you thought it would!
Now, we all know stuff happens sometimes! But then what? It is best to keep a record of what happened and what actions were taken. Both for your own records, but also to ensure any follow up, especially pastorally.
For instance you’re at a sporting event and one of your young people falls and breaks their arm. You’ve done all the immediate stuff, got them medical help, called parents, let your vicar know what’s happened. Now you need to grab a quiet moment, sit down and write it down. How the arm was broken and what steps were taken after that, and finally what needs to be done going forward. Do you need to visit the family? Are there some follow up points with your team? Do you need to speak to any or all of your young people?
Once you’ve completed the form, file it in a secure place, in a folder, on a hard drive, behind a password, whatever you need to do to honour privacy, and circumvent someone finding it by accident.
There are many pieces of information we need to hold about our young people, especially when we are bringing kai into our ministries, travelling to events and camps and even simply walking around our neighbourhoods. Permission slips are also a great way of connecting with parents, ensuring they have the opportunity to know what’s happening in your ministry, as well as ensuring you have the necessary information to care for your young people.
You might want to create a permission slip for all young people on their first or second visit to youth, so that you know about any allergies, dietary requirements and health needs, and of course the all important contact information in case of emergency. It’s also wise to know if any of your young people are not keen to have their photos on social media.
You will definitely want to create a permission slip if you are heading offsite for any reason that will involve transport, camps or other events. Here are some ideas for clauses you can use to create your permission slips.
Finally, ensure your permission slips are stored securely, where only you or your trusted team can access young people’s details .
Let’s face it, occasionally accidents happen and we need to kick into emergency mode. Here’s a bit of a flow chart to help you and your team discuss before the worst happens, so everyone knows what to do.
NOTE: All these forms are PDF’s, if you would prefer the word documents, email to get them sent to you.
