Indiana Insurance Hosts School Violence Seminar in Ohio, Oct. 23

Indiana Insurance, a member of Liberty Mutual Group and an insurer of public and private schools throughout the Midwest, is hosting a free, day-long seminar on Oct. 23, 2006, to help Ohio school officials develop better school safety plans.

Recognizing that violence is a pressing concern in schools today, Indiana Insurance has invited Michael Dorn, a leading expert in school violence prevention, to deliver a series of presentations at The Fawcett Center on the campus of Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. Dorn is the founder of Safe Havens International, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping schools around the world internalize school safety expertise. Dorn has extensive experience, including training high-ranking Israeli police officials, and has also recently lectured at the Vietnam National University in Ho Chi Minh City.

Polling by Safe Havens International of educators and law enforcement officials in all 50 states indicates that fewer than 10 percent of school systems have safety plans in accordance with best practice models.

Dorn will detail the comprehensive school safety-planning model used by more than 8,000 public and private schools throughout the nation. He will also address realistic anti-terrorism measures, emergency preparedness, weapons in schools, school hazard and vulnerability assessments, crisis planning, the consequences of school bullying, and access control measures.

“As far back as 1927, when more than 40 students and staff were murdered at a Bath, Michigan elementary school, there have been far too many acts of violence in American schools. We are again seeing the very real consequences of school violence with recent deadly events occurring in schools across our country,” he said. “While no school can be 100 percent safe, our techniques have been successfully applied worldwide to avert dozens of planned school shootings and bombings.”

“Through seminars like this one, and through the creation of our Safety Advantage Network, we can get meaningful and actionable information into our policyholders’ hands and the community at large,” said Michael D. Connell, Indiana Insurance president and chief executive officer.

Seminar attendees will receive information from Safe Havens International and other members of the Safety Advantage Network, which Indiana Insurance created to provide policyholders access to specialists around the country in the areas of school violence prevention, sexual abuse prevention, employment screening best practices, and online safety training, among others topics. The network members include:

* Safe Havens International is a non-profit school safety center that provides training and resources to make schools safer. Staff analysts are dedicated to helping schools internalize school safety expertise through the development of quality, customized crisis plans tailored to a school’s or organization’s specific needs.

*Childhelp’s Good Touch-Bad Touch program is nationally recognized as a premier abuse prevention program. Designed for pre-school and kindergarten through sixth grade students, educators are trained to teach this curriculum, which gives children positive, non-threatening, and practical information and skills they need to play a significant role in the prevention or interruption of sexual abuse and bullying.

* Safe Hiring Solutions is a full service employment screening firm that specializes in pre-employment background checks and employee drug screening, among other services. With more than 70 years of combined law enforcement experience on its management team, Safe Hiring Solutions’ web-based InstaScreen system enables schools and other clients to order and retrieve comprehensive reports 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

* Summit Trainingweb combines expertly researched safety content with video; state-of-the-art graphics; animation; interactions and narration in providing more than 100 online training courses that address critical safety issues.

* SawStop has created a technologically innovative woodshop cabinet saw that stops and retracts the saw blade within five milliseconds of sensing an object with the same electrical signature as a finger. Approximately 60,000 table saw accidents occur annually, but in SawStop demonstrations, accidental contact with objects similar to a finger yield little more than a slight cut.

To register for the Indiana Insurance Reality-Based School Safety Seminar, which will be held on Monday, Oct. 23, 2006, from 9a.m. to 4p.m., call 800-436-9600, ext. 3508, fax to 513-576-3308, or register online at schoolsafety@indiana-ins.com.

Source: Liberty Mutual Group