Thomas J. Cathey, EdD, Director, Legal/Legislative Issues, ACSI
Is Your Parking Lot a Playground?
© 2006 by Brotherhood Mutual Insurance Company. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Drive by almost any parking lot on a warm spring evening and you see them—children and teens roller-skating, playing ball, and riding bicycles. It looks like harmless fun. But when it’s on your church parking lot, the harmless fun could become a liability. What if a child breaks an arm or suffers a head injury while on church property? Some congregations deal with this problem by posting “No Trespassing” signs. Others prefer to do nothing, hoping no one is injured. But most are simply looking for a way to balance ministry with good stewardship.
You can best protect yourself and your ministry from liability by not allowing neighborhood children to play in your parking lot. If that response is not a practical option for your church, here’s what you can do to minimize the risk of liability:
- Keep asphalt or concrete parking lots free of holes and large cracks.
- Repair depressions in the parking lot where water or ice accumulates.
- Post signs stating that persons not associated with the church who use church facilities do so at their own risk.
- If you use cables or chains to block access to certain areas, cover them with 4-inch diameter yellow plastic tubing to increase visibility, or [better yet,] replace them with gates.
- Paint parking stops, curbs, speed bumps, and other raised surfaces with yellow safety paint.
- If you see children behaving improperly, or if the parking lot is needed for a church activity, ask the children to leave theproperty.
—Adapted by Brotherhood Mutual Insurance Company from an article in The Deacon’s Bench, Winter/Spring 1996
New Labor Department Web Tool for Health Care Laws
The U.S. Labor Department has an interactive website to help guide employers through the maze of federal health-benefit laws. This site provides guidance on COBRA (the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985), HIPPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), the Mental Health Parity Act, the Women’s Health and Cancer Rights Act, and the Newborns’ and Mothers’ Health Protection Act. It also has helpful information for employees and their families regarding life and work events, such as childbirth, adoption, retirement, disabilities, and eligibility for Medicare. The site is part of a series of “elaws” sites covering employment laws to assist workers and small businesses.
Public Alert Radios Provided to All Schools
In September 2008, the federal government began a massive effort to send a free public alert radio to every religious and independent K–12 school and preschool in the United States. The radio is used to alert school officials to local weather hazards and other types of emergencies.
What is an NOAA Public Alert Radio?
Also known as the NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] Weather Radio All-Hazards, NOAA’s Public Alert Radio is a life-saving early warning tool that notifies radio users of all hazards in their area 24 hours a day/seven days a week, even when other means of communication are disabled. The radio will signal an audible alert with a visible indicator light as a “watch” or “warning” and a brief digital text message to advise on a wide range of emergency situations and post-event information for all types of hazards, including natural (e.g., earthquakes or avalanches), environmental (e.g., chemical releases or oil spills), and public safety (e.g., AMBER alerts or 911 telephone outages).
Visit the public alert radiowebsite to access an abundance of information.
CSE 12.4 Legal