Contents

Introduction
Facts about Young Worker Safety and Health
Steps in Coordinating a Young Worker Project
Forming Partnerships with Schools
Developing Teen Peer Education Programs
Involving Parents
Linking with Job Training Programs
Including Healthcare Providers
Working With Employers
Reaching the Broader Community
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C

Involving Parents

Why Parents Should Be Partners

During focus groups, many working teens indicated that they turn to their parents for information and advice about jobs. But in order to advise their children, parents must be knowledgeable about workplace rights and responsibilities. In many States, parents are required to sign a work permit before their teen is allowed to work, providing parents an opportunity to discuss work-related issues. They can also support their working teens who need advice about how to raise safety and health issues effectively with their supervisors.

Reaching out to parents in your community

Identify organizations that are parent-run or that serve parents.

Schools, social agencies, and health organizations can help you identify some parent organizations. Parent groups that address issues related to the health and education of teens and resource centers that provide information and materials to parents are likely to be interested in integrating young worker safety and health concepts into their existing activities.

Conduct workshops for groups of parents in the community.

Workshops should include information about job-related hazards, worker rights and responsibilities, and speaking up effectively in the workplace. Whether you conduct the workshops yourself or solicit other experts to run them, involving teen educators in the training is effective. When working with parents with limited English proficiency, bilingual teens are an especially valuable resource.

Teens and project staff educate parents about their workplace rights

In the predominantly immigrant community of the Vernon-Central area of Los Angeles, we discovered that parents had many questions about their own rights at work as well as their children's rights. In fact, not one parent in our group had heard of Cal-OSHA (the California office of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration). So our peer educators organized a series of community workshops held after school for parents and students. We invited representatives from Cal-OSHA, the Office of Fair Employment and Housing, local unions, and legal aid organizations to speak to the group on topics including safety, child labor laws, workers' compensation, and sexual harassment.

As one parent, Aurora Marquez, explained, "Many people in our community don't know what to do if they suffer an accident or if they're a victim of abuse at work. These workshops are very important so we can obtain information and remove the blinders that cover our eyes." Since then, Marquez has become an advocate for adults and teenagers who face problems at work.

—Linda Delp

PTA meetings provide an opportunity for safety and health workshops

In each of the five largest Oakland high schools, we conducted short workshops for parents during their PTA meetings. We presented situations involving working teens and asked the parents to identify hazards and laws that were being broken and to discuss what the teen should do. We discovered that many parents had never heard of some of the child labor laws, such as restrictions on the types of jobs and hours teens can work. Others were interested in learning more about their own workplace rights. Many realized that they didn't know a lot about what their teens did at work. At the end of one workshop, a parent summed up by saying: "We should ask our kids exactly what they do at work. A lot of times kids don't know what to do about problems at work. They are not problem solvers. That's what we're here for."

—Diane Bush

Distribute posters, brochures, and other materials.

Provide the work permit office with a brochure for parents. Have a booth with information at school events that parents attend. Distribute materials to parent organizations, schools, clinic waiting rooms, health fairs, and other local gatherings.

School distributes materials for parents and students

In Brockton, we worked with the high school to ensure that every student received a packet of information on health and safety and workplace rights and responsibilities. The packets included a letter from our staff, a brochure for parents, a brochure for teens, and a work permit checklist. In addition, we had the parent brochure translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole, which the school mailed to the non-English speaking parents.

—Robin Dewey

Developing Teen Peer Education Programs

Linking with Job Training Programs