Organisers of gap-year schemes, ranging from environmental to ski instruction programmes, are changing their terms and conditions to allow them to contact participants’ parents without permission in the event of serious incidents.
The changes are being mooted following an armed robbery and assault that took place during an environmental gap-year programme run by the Society for Envionrmental Exploration, operating as Frontier, on Tanzania’s Pemba Island on July 2, 2004.
A party of 24 young volunteers and five staff from Frontier were attacked shortly after arriving at their camp at the start of the programme. Two volunteers received gunshot wounds while others were assaulted although none was critically injured.
At the time, the volunteers instructed Frontier not to inform their parents of the incident until the following day when the situation would be clearer. However, reports of the armed robbery appeared in the media before some relatives were informed, leading to calls for changes in the way these programmes are run.
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The proposal to allow year-out providers to contact the parents of participants is among a number of recommendations that have emerged from an independent enquiry into the incident commissioned by the Year Out Group (www.yearoutgroup.org), an association of 35 independent year-out providers that includes Bunac, Camp America and Nonstopski as well as Frontier.
The enquiry report, which has just been published, says: “Most clients of Year Out Group’s members are over 18 years old. They see this year out as an important period of transition from dependence to independence. Year-out providers are required by law to respect their clients’ rights as adults and are thus only able to inform parents of an incident if authorised by the young person concerned.
“At the same time, year out providers gave a duty of care and parents, particularly parents of pre-university students, expect to be informed in the event of their children being involved in an incident. A balance has to be found and year out providers need to establish, through their Terms and Conditions, the circumstances in which they reserve the right to contact parents. Each year out provider will need to develop wording appropriate to its specific activities.”
In an attempt to reduce the risk of similar events in the future, the 35 members of the Year Out Group have already agreed to submit copies of their Risk Management Registers to the organisation’s chief executive Richard Oliver. The group also intends to implement an external audit procedure and establish an independent dispute settlement service.
More than 25,000 young people take part in gap-year programmes with the Year Out Group’s members each year.
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