Holy Trinity Safe Environment Policy

Holy Trinity Catholic School follows today’s best practices to insure a safe environment for all children in our school. We have a formal Safe Environment Policy in place to protect children from abuse, and it has recently been updated under provisions of PA Act 153.

Clearances Required for Volunteers: If you plan to volunteer with children in any capacity at Holy Trinity Catholic School, you need to have Safe Environment clearances in place. If you are not sure if your clearances have expired, you may contact any of the HTCS school offices to check the status.

Holy Trinity Catholic School volunteers who have any contact with children are required to submit all state and federal clearances and complete the required Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown Youth Protection course and the University of Pittsburgh Mandated Reporter course. Both courses are offered on-line, free of charge.

Volunteers are asked to enter their email address and create a password to begin each training course. The Diocesan course takes approximately one hour to complete; the University of Pittsburgh course takes approximately three hours to complete. When each course is successfully completed, an on-line certificate will be generated. Volunteers must print two copies of each completion certificate. They should keep one copy of each certificate for their own records and deliver a copy of each certificate to the office of the school where they will be volunteering.

The following guide will  help you navigate this Training Course. Click here to download and print very detailed instructions.

Legal Forms to be Completed by all Volunteers

In addition to the two required training courses, every volunteer must obtain certain legal clearance certificates from state and federal government before they can be approved to volunteer. To receive the certificates, you must submit a formal application which the government agency then processes before sending you a certificate. This is usually done on-line, but you may also pick up paper copies of the government forms at your school office, fill them in and mail them to the agency. Addresses are given on the forms. Processing the forms may take several days. In some cases you will receive a certificate via return e-mail; in other cases certificates will be sent to you via the US Postal Service. The clearances you need are:

Pennsylvania State Police Criminal Record Check:
Go to: https://epatch.state.pa.us (do not do in CHROME)
Please choose according to your role:
Volunteers click on yellow box “New Record Check” (FREE for volunteers only)
Employees: click on the gray box “Submit a New Record Check” (Fee is $22.00). When you get to the page that says “Record Check Details” scroll down a bit and you will see a link to a Certification Form. Click on that link, follow directions and print the actual certificate.

PA Department Child Abuse History Certification
Go to: https://www.compass.state.pa.us/cwis/public/home
Click on “Create a New Account” and choose your role (Fees are waived for Volunteers; for employment purposes, fee is $13.00).You will need to create a “Keystone ID”- this is like a username – it is not a password. After you fill in the information requested, the state will send you a temporary password through your email. You will need to use the Keystone ID (username) and the temporary password to sign back in to the website to create your own password.
You must log back into the website using your username and your own password to actually apply for the clearance. Record your keystone ID and password and keep for future reference. Reports can be obtained both online and in the mail.

FBI Fingerprint Clearances
FBI required for employees and volunteers ONLY if a resident less than 10 years in PA
Go to https://uenroll.identogo.com/
Please refer to “New FBI Helpful Hints” document
Applicant will need to have a code (see chart)

Fees vary on type of application $22- $25 (code used)
Appointments can be made on-line (recommended), walk-in options vary by site
Each county has designated vendors for fingerprinting

PA Dept. of Education Arrest and Conviction Record
Click here to download and print this document. Follow the instructions, print two copies of the completed form, keep one copy for your records and submit the other to the school where you will be volunteering.

IMPORTANT

Background Check  will need to be completed when logging into virtus.org.

The law dictates that all volunteers must be in compliance prior to the commencement of service and must have all clearances and trainings before they can be approved to volunteer.