Safe Sitter Inc

America’s young babysitters accept the responsibility of a child’s life, yet they oftentimes don’t truly realize it!  Most youth lack the knowledge and experience needed to handle medical, behavioral, or household emergencies that may occur.  This awesome responsibility often receives too little emphasis and too little preparation before a young person takes that first babysitting job. 

Sometimes youth actively seek babysitting jobs.  Other times, by default, they become caretakers of younger siblings because their parent is away.  Some simply find themselves entirely alone while at home after school.

Safe Sitter, Inc. is committed to teaching youth to become prepared babysitters who provide safe and nurturing conditions for children.  Safety for the babysitter is equally emphasized.  It is the only nonprofit organization with a nationwide reach that is exclusively dedicated to babysitter training for youth.

Safe Sitter, Inc. was founded over thirty years ago by an Indianapolis hospital’s Chief of Pediatrics who was frustrated by preventable babysitter-related injuries and deaths.  Still today, unintentional injuries lead the causes of death among infants, children, and adolescents and cause more deaths than all diseases combined! 

The effects of the Safe Sitter® babysitter training program can be traced to safer, happier, healthier families.  Safe Sitter® plays a critical role in providing young people with meaningful achievement, confidence building, and exposure to life lessons that can become the basis for a young person’s own future parenting.

To offer the babysitting course to pre-teens and young teens, Safe Sitter, Inc. collaborates with various community minded organizations that provide staff or volunteers to teach the course.  In fact, Safe Sitter, Inc. boasts over 800 teaching sites and 4,000 instructors nationwide.  They teach both boys and girls utilizing the Safe Sitter® curriculum and teaching materials.  Safe Sitter, Inc. actively seeks and engages more teaching sites each year. 

The Safe Sitter® babysitter training course is taught by…
-Hospitals, Fire Departments, Parks and Recreation Centers, Camps, Churches, and Schools
-Youth organizations such as Boys and Girls Clubs, Ys, Girl Scouts, and Boy Scouts
-Many other types of non-profit and for-profit organizations

The Safe Sitter® curriculum is medically accurate, competency-based, and highly-structured.  It is reviewed and updated regularly by two physicians and other experts.  They ensure alignment with advances in first aid, health care, and the American Heart Association guidelines. 

Students enrolled in the Safe Sitter® course can experience hands-on manikin practice in rescue skills, small group interactive learning, role-playing, and games.  They learn to evaluate and respond to emergencies and to recognize and understand when and why to request outside help.

The curriculum seeks to balance confidence and competence with an awareness of adolescent limitations.  Lessons can include Babysitting as a Business, Success on the Job, Child Care Essentials, Safety for the Sitter, Injury Management, Preventing Problem Behavior, Care of a Choking Infant, Care of a Choking Child, Infant and Child CPR, Preventing Injuries and Behavior Management.  Numerous young lives have been saved by quick-responding Safe Sitters!