Hi Geoff, 

I spent several years working as an education coordinator at Please Touch Museum, the children’s museum of Philadelphia. 

We always had floor staff-floor staff would basically man the exhibits by making sure children were safe (ie. following the rules in the play zones, first responders is an emergency hapoened). Our floor staff also ensured that children of the right age were playing in their designated areas. We had toddler zones and often times big kids would come in to those zones and make it unsafe for kids. 

Also, every staff member working on the floor was always required to have a walkie. We had several walkie codes in case someone thew up, had an accident, needed a first aid kit, or most importantly if we had a separated child. Separated children happen often as the museum gets crowded and parents are on their cell phones. Sometimes the child would be frantic looking for their parents or vice versa, the parents would be frantic looking for their child. Here’s what we did in this case-as soon as a staff member was notified by either parent or child, that they were looking for somebody, the staff member would get on the walkie and say something like “attention all staff, I am here in blank exhibit with a parent who is looking for their separated child. Child’s name is blank, they are approximately blank years old, and they are wearing blank.” This call would notify staff on the floor to stop what they were doing and start looking for the separated child or parent. We usually had about a 3-5 minute window until we had to lock down the museum. Once parent and child were reunited the lock down was ended. 

We also followed a similar rule as BCM, if adults came without children they were required to leave their ID at the desk and they would also receive a lanyard with a badge. This helped floor staff to know this person is unaccompanied and should not have any children with them. 

Please feel free to email if you have any other questions. 

Best, 

Melissa Speck

Sent from my iPhone

> On Aug 6, 2019, at 10:31 AM, Geoffrey Woodcox <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> All:
> 
> My museum is in the process of undergoing a complete renovation and will be adding a large amount of space that is geared specifically to kids--one area for kids who are 0-5 and another that is geared for 6-12. We had a small children's area before the renovation, but it was maybe 2,000 square feet? I don't know the exact square footage offhand, but the new area will be in the range of 10-15,000 square feet total and will be a much bigger draw than our previous space. With that in mind, we were discussing that we need some security procedures in place to keep kids safe. I saw that the Boston Children's Museum has a security policy in place that requires adults unaccompanied by children to leave their ID at the front desk while they tour the museum. I could see us doing that for our children's spaces specifically.
> 
> So any of you who are at kid-oriented institutions, what security measures do you have in place to keep people from walking off with children who don't belong with them? What policies do you have to ensure that kids stay safe while using your spaces?
> 
> Thank you in advance for any advice you can give. We're entering new territory for our institution.
> 
> Geoff Woodcox
> Curator of Collections
> Sloan Museum of Discovery
> 
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