The most essential level of adult support is the work done by youth advisors. However, the task of supporting youth advisors cannot be adequately addressed without an understanding of the need to reinforce adult involvement on all levels. Ministers, religious educators and church board members must be encouraged in their support of youth through education and recognition for youth programming successes. At the other end of the spectrum, the volunteers who provide support by driving youth to conferences or helping in the kitchen must be acknowledged not only explicitly but also in implicit ways such as expense reimbursement and sharing of responsibility. Only by striving to spread an ever-wider adult umbrella over our efforts to empower our youth will Unitarian Universalist youth programming be protected from the destructive effects of generational division.

For many adolescents, the youth advisor is the first adult figure they have encountered who offers a non-parental, non-authoritarian relationship. What the youth needs from this adult, and what the sensitive, committed advisor naturally provides, is someone who will be a mentor, role model, lay minister and friend. In the Youth Advisor’s Handbook (page 6), Shell Tain writes, “Who you are with youth is far more important than what tasks you perform.” What the beginning advisor soon discovers is that being who you are in a meaningful relationship with youth will lead you to, in the words of one advisor, “assume a lot of risk and responsibility, and stretch yourself spiritually and personally in ways that make you vulnerable.” As an institution, it is unfair to ask people to do this without also offering them ongoing guidance and support.

The following sections discuss in more detail some of the specific areas concerning youth advisors that have been found to be in need of attention.

There is clearly an association-wide need for a fuller and more broadly disseminated articulation of youth empowerment. Advisor training is an ideal forum in which to promote this philosophy. In fact, many of the issues cited by advisors indicate a need for help in sorting out the youth/adult power balance. Questions were raised about how far to let things go before asserting authority (Forbid climbing trees? Or only forbid climbing high voltage telephone poles?), guidelines for personal disclosure (How much should one reveal of one’s personal life?) and clarification of appropriate boundaries (to hug or not to hug).

Also cited in discussions, however, was a need for accompanying training in human relations, adolescent development and psychology, and skills for dealing with the emotional/psychological problems of youth. An advisor on the on-line mailing list states about his local group, “Our youth tend to have a high incidence of broken home lives, drug use and other risk behaviors. Some training in how to recognize danger signs and provide basic levels of counseling would be of immense help.”

Advisor training content needs to clearly differentiate the specific needs and challenges of junior high age youth groups. In view of the fact that this is often the most difficult age for which to attract adult volunteers, it is particularly important that these adults are provided with training and support appropriate to the pre-adolescent age group.

Finally, a critical area in need of further development is the promotion of safe congregations and sexual ethics. Since the mid-1980s, the UUA has put increasing focus on issues of clergy sexual misconduct leading to training programs and efforts at increasing awareness among congregation members. This work has been done to great beneficial effect, constituting something of a revolution within our religious movement.

However, this work has been applied to youth advisors as if they are an extension of religious education teachers. To raise awareness of sexual ethics among youth advisors, attention needs to be given to how the challenge of maintaining sexual boundaries between adults and adolescents is different from adult to adult boundaries and adult to child. Being that adolescence is by definition a process of coming into sexual identity, youth are particularly vulnerable to sexual exploitation on many different levels. And given that youth are developmentally and physically so close to adulthood, even the most well-meaning adult can find it difficult to establish the appropriate personal boundary. The “Code of Ethics for Persons Working with Children and Youth in UUA Sponsored Programs” (see Appendix E) was designed to provide a safeguard against adult-to-youth sexual exploitation. But advisors need more explicit help in navigating the many gray areas of sexual boundaries and the wide-ranging and complex issues of personal safety between youth and adults.

Any reevaluation of advisor training must also look at problems of promotion and accessibility. The Youth Office reports that the trainings are not requested or attended as much as they had hoped. Yet advisors in the field seem to be clamoring for more training. This contradiction needs to be resolved.

An advisor from the Mid-west states, “At my church, when I said something about ‘being there’ for the kids, an older member of the congregation said, ‘Be there or be square. Be here now.’ Not very helpful when you’re dealing with youth depression, suicide, incarceration, etc. I feel that many adults in the congregation would prefer to just not know.”

Clearly, these circumstances also have the potential for putting advisors at risk—emotionally as well as morally and legally—which is a significant factor leading to advisor burn-out. To adequately support advisors who are committed to serving youth with whatever problems they may bring, an institutional standard needs to be promoted whereby local youth advisors are connected with a designated resource person capable of clinical pastoral consultation to provide them, on an ad hoc basis, with ministry and counselling supervision.

A system of advisor support and supervision must also include a clear understanding of who the advisor is accountable to (the Director or Minister of Religious Education, the Parish Minister, the Chair of the Religious Education Committee, etc.), a method for performance evaluation and feedback, and procedures for removing inappropriate adults. Some advisors advocate an institutional standard of regular rotations of service (e.g., two advisors serve alternating two-year terms, or advisors being required to take a year off after three years of service).

In 1994, Youth Council established a guideline stating that continental youth advisors must be over 25 years of age, but that individuals between the ages of 21 and 25 could serve as “junior advisors” under the mentorship of an over-25 advisor. On the district and local levels, there is confusion on how to apply this standard and concerns that junior advisors may need more or a different type of training and support, as well as questions as to the wisdom of allowing junior advisors at all.

Finally, any discussion of youth empowerment is bound to have as its subtext, whether acknowledged or not, a myriad of questions around issues of adult legal liability. Over and over again, on questionnaires and in interviews, advisors expressed a need for more information about their legal liabilities. To truly promote leadership in youth it is essential that matters of legal liability and accountability are thoroughly explored and understood by all concerned adults. Otherwise, liability anxieties will linger in an insidious, unstated manner and will have the potential to subtly undermine any efforts at genuine empowerment of the youth.

One way to address this communication gap is with more district level support for youth advisors, such as a district Youth Programming Consultant who is charged primarily with the job of supporting and training youth advisors, along the lines of the emerging district Religious Education Consultants. But the development of a strong and comprehensive advisor networking and advocacy organization is another critical component for fostering better communication. Such an organization would provide a forum for sharing information and resources, as well as give voice to youth advisors as a constituent body within the UUA. A potential model for this is the way that LREDA has served religious educators, taking into account the differences in professional status. According to the “YRUU Policies and Procedures Manual” (p. 28), theoretically, an advisor network already exists, but this “network” is more intended than actual since, without an organized body or continued support, it offers limited benefit to youth advisors laboring in isolation on the local level.

The Ministry With Youth Renaissance Module was the first training forum to introduce the “Five Components of Balanced Youth Programming” developed by Eugene Navias and outlined in the Five-Year Review Committee report. The Religious Education Department could also consider adding to the curriculum the more recent program model on the “Five Steps to Building Community”. This “Five Steps” model has been used to great benefit in the Leadership Development Conferences, and can help religious educators know what their youth advisors will be exposed to when they attend LDCs and advisor trainings.

The Ministry With Youth Renaissance Module serves a critical need in broadening general adult support for youth programming. In addition to being updated and made more accessible to religious educators, we would like to see it actively promoted to ministers and lay leaders. We believe that education about ministry with youth is an important educational component for our ministry and we hope that eventually all ministers will participate in this training module.