Parents

Take an active role in the employment decisions of your children:

• Be aware. Know where your children are working and what they are doing.
• Ask questions. Frequently ask about what they did at work and the training and supervision provided by the employer. Discuss any problems or concerns.
• Report hazards. Help your young worker report hazards to managers or, if necessary, to OSHA if a work environment seems unsafe.
• Watch for signs of concern. Is a job taking too much of a physical or mental toll on your young worker? How is your child's performance at school? A loss of interest in or energy for school could mean the job is too demanding. Other signs of concern could include increased stress levels, anxiety, fatigue and depression.

Educators

As an educator, you can help protect young workers in several ways:

• Understand your role. You have an important opportunity to teach students safety and health skills to help them succeed and be safe at work. Help young workers build safety consciousness from their first job forward.
• Teach young workers their rights and provide safety information. Incorporate information about workers' rights and occupational safety and health hazards into the high school and middle school curriculum. Integrate health and safety training into your general education and vocational programs. Students can use this knowledge throughout their careers, and it may be the only training they get before joining the workforce.

Here are some resources for educators:

• Your Construction Safety & Health Program: Safe Students, Safe Workers. A guide and set of program self-assessment tools to help you build safety and health management systems and education into your Career and Technical Education (CTE) Training Programs. Guide includes Action Steps and resource links for administrators, instructors, and industrial advisory committee members.
• The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Youth@Work: Talking Safety curriculum can be used in the classroom or other group trainings. It has been customized for each state and Puerto Rico to address state-specific rules and regulations. It includes step-by-step instructions for presenting the material.
• The Minnesota Department of Health Work Safe Work Smart curriculum teaches occupational health and safety issues to high school students with the goal of reducing injury rates of young workers.
• The Georgia Tech Research Institute's Center for Young Worker Safety and Health offers seven online training modules free of charge for students, employers and educators.
• The Resources section of this website contains additional workplace safety and health materials.