Youth Workin' It

Consultancy and Resources for Youth Workers and Organizations Worldwide

How To Do Youth Work With Your Partner

By 2 Comments

How to do youth work with your partner
Can you look like this when doing youth work with your partner?

Q: I’m a youth leader and my spouse volunteers with me. I really enjoy sharing this common passion with them but sometimes it’s frustrating when we take the work home with us. Do you have any suggestions?

A: Stephen and I were group home parents for six months and did youth work in very close proximity every day from 6am to 10pm. If anyone understands how you’re feeling it’s us. We’ve also done our fair share of volunteering together in youth ministry.

Benefits

The benefits of having your partner or spouse as your co-facilitator include:

  • Someone who understands – They know exactly what you’re talking about when a parent or group is frustrating (or a joy!)
  • Someone who’s in your corner – They’re on your side even when you make mistakes. They also probably know you better than anyone and are therefore well placed to give you feedback in a way that you’ll accept.
  • Someone who shares your passion – It can be fun to share some things together. You don’t need to do everything together, but you can also find one evening a week working towards a common goal is quite a positive experience for your relationship.

Challenges

As you’re already aware there are also some challenges. These include:

  • Taking your work home with you – You might spend all evening getting more and more wound up about what happened at group instead of being able to come home and switch off.
  • Strain on the relationship – You may not be in a great place at home at the moment and receiving feedback from your other half might not be a positive experience for your relationship.
  • Not wanting the same things – Sometimes one half feels like they’re just doing what the other half wants to do. In my experience, in faith-based youth ministry the wife is often the ‘girls leader’ while the husband is the youth pastor, so the wife gets automatically included as the second volunteer. This isn’t always best and, while some relationships do well to have a shared interest, sometimes it’s not your passion and you’re doing it because it’s what you feel like you’re supposed to do.

Tips

OK, so really it’s just one tip with many parts:

Communicate

No relationship is perfect but make sure you’re good communicators and in a steady and stable place in your relationship before doing youth work together. Youth work, while awesome, is stressful enough without additional pressure.

  • Be prepared to communicate about what went well during a session and what could be improved. Don’t take it personally, but also know when your partner needs some time before sharing about the colossal mistake they made at the front of the group in the last session.
  • Share if you don’t want to continue to volunteer in a youth ministry or program. Be honest about your willingness and interest in being a worker or volunteer for their youth program. You might find more joy doing other things and only volunteering occasionally.
  • Take the time to ask your partner or spouse if they would be able/willing to help – don’t just assume it. Stephen is an awesome Girl Scout volunteer but I only ask him every so often so I usually get a yes, rather than expecting him to fill the role of weekly volunteer.

Bonus Tip

Be patient. You’re going to get it right sometimes and you’re going to make mistakes when working or volunteering together, but your youth work shouldn’t come between you and your significant other.

Your relationship needs to come before your youth programs, otherwise neither of you will be any good to anyone.

Question: How do you handle doing youth work with your partner? Or does your partner not volunteer at all? What tips do you have? Let us know in the comments below.

Don’t miss out on future posts by:

  1. Signing up to receive our posts via email
  2. Following us on Twitter
  3. Liking us on Facebook
  4. Signing up to our RSS feed

 

How To Deal With Unacceptable Behavior At A Youth Retreat

By Leave a Comment

Youth Retreat
If you have a problem, if no one else can help and if you can find them – maybe you can hire the Youth Removal Team

Q: The last time I planned a youth retreat, we had a young person who had completely unacceptable behavior throughout the weekend. It disrupted the entire event, but he had to remain at the retreat center as we didn’t have enough volunteers to take him home and his parents wouldn’t come to pick him up.

What’s the best thing to do if something like this ever happens again?

A: It’s always a shame when one young person spoils things for the whole youth group. There are two steps you can take though to help ensure that if this does happen again, you can deal with it effectively.

1. Have A Youth Behavior Policy In Place

I’m not sure if you already have a youth behavior policy – if not, get one put in place for the retreat ASAP. This would detail some examples of unacceptable behavior so that both your youth and their parents know what’s expected of them.

You’re not going to be able to put together an exhaustive list, but some rules that you may wish to include would be things like:

  • No alcohol or drugs
  • Boys aren’t allowed in girls’ rooms and vice versa
  • No pornography
  • No weapons
  • No violence

This policy should be provided to both the young people and their parents, also giving an idea of what consequences can be expected. Some behaviors may have a zero tolerance policy, so discovering a weapon would have an automatic consequence of the youth being sent home.

Other behaviors may result in warnings, such as a verbal warning, then a reminder warning, then being sent home. This gives the young person an opportunity to correct their behavior and shows that you’re fair in how you deal with situations.

Read this post for more ideas on how to deal with youth behavior and putting the policy in place. In particular, make sure both the young people and their parents sign an agreement to the behavior policy in advance of the youth retreat. This means they know for certain what will and won’t be accepted.

2. Have A Youth Removal Team

As you mentioned in your question, you had no way of taking the young person home following their unacceptable behavior. It can be hard getting enough volunteers to help with a youth retreat in the first place, so you often can’t spare any to take a young person home, particularly as this might mean that you’d have unsafe ratios.

The solution to this problem is to have a youth removal team in place beforehand. This would consist of two or three volunteers who aren’t at the retreat, but who are on call to come to the retreat center in the event that you need them to take a young person home.

For child protection, we’d recommend having two people take the young person home, at least one of which should be the same sex as the youth.

Having this team in place will help ensure that there is minimal disruption to the youth retreat and means that the rest of your youth group don’t miss out on an exciting weekend due to the behavior of just one person.

Question: Have you ever had to send a young person home from a youth retreat due to their behavior? How did you deal with it? We’d love to hear your experiences in the comments below.

You can also connect with us by:

  1. Signing up to receive our posts via email
  2. Following us on Twitter
  3. Liking us on Facebook
  4. Signing up to our RSS feed

 

The Youth Retreat Volunteer You Need To Have

By Leave a Comment

Youth Retreat VolunteerQ: I’m planning a youth retreat and am trying to make a list of roles I need volunteers to fill. Are there any roles people don’t normally consider that I might have missed?

A: There are many different roles that need filling by volunteers on a youth retreat. We’ve outlined many of these in our youth retreat book, but here is one that you may not have considered:

Designated Emergency Contact

We’re not talking about having emergency contact details for parents and guardians, although that is something that should always be included on the registration form.

Instead, we mean having someone who’s a designated emergency contact for the youth retreat for both parents and yourself. This should be an adult who’s available 24 hours a day for the duration of the retreat. They don’t have to be one of your regular volunteers, just someone who’s willing to perform this role.

Phone Numbers

This responsible adult should be given phone numbers for:

  • All the parents
  • Yourself
  • All the other volunteers at the youth retreat
  • The retreat center
  • Any other location you might visit (e.g. theme park, climbing center, high ropes course, etc)

Why You Would Call Them

If you have any emergencies at the youth retreat and need to contact parents, you can call this person who can then communicate with the relevant parents. This means that you only have to explain the situation once and can focus on the emergency on hand, rather than potentially having to call several parents.

Why Parents Would Call Them

If parents have an emergency (e.g. a family member has passed away unexpectedly), they can call the emergency contact who can then call you.

Having someone perform this role ensures that you won’t be interrupted at inopportune times by parents who don’t have an emergency, but who just want to make sure that their little Johnny isn’t feeling homesick. This middleman can therefore make a judgment call to decide if they should contact you immediately.

For situations that aren’t an emergency, you could pre-arrange a time for this volunteer to call you each day – one that fits in with your youth retreat schedule, such as during free time or at lunch.

Recruiting a designated emergency contact as a stay-at-home volunteer therefore helps ensure you have a safe youth trip by having an effective communication structure, while also ensuring you don’t get interrupted by non-emergency phone calls.

Question: What one youth retreat volunteer do you consider to be essential? Let us know in the comments below.

You can also connect with us by:

  1. Signing up to receive our posts via email
  2. Following us on Twitter
  3. Liking us on Facebook
  4. Signing up to our RSS feed

 

10 Ways To Recruit, Manage And Maintain Volunteers

By Leave a Comment

10 Ways To Recruit, Manage And Maintain VolunteersQ: I have a hard time getting and keeping volunteers – they either flake out or burn out. Do you have any tips?

A: Recruiting, managing and maintaining volunteers can be a daunting task. Sometimes you have people banging down your door to help, but that’s not usually the case because you don’t work with the cute little kids or the cool college age students… you work with the tweens (‘between elementary and high school’ i.e. middle schoolers) and teens.

We’ll unpack these areas more in the coming weeks, but for now here are some easy tips for recruiting, managing and maintaining volunteers for your youth work:

3 Tips For Volunteer Recruitment

  1. Tell stories – Share positive stories with people about what good things are happening in your youth work or ministry. Everyone loves a good story or vision to get behind.
  2. Make volunteering organized – Be organized when it comes to schedules and rosters for volunteers. Everyone loves clear, direct information.
  3. Make volunteering easy – Be ready for potential volunteers to apply and have application packs prepared, easy to complete and get back to them in a timely manner. If you say you need help, be ready to get people involved ASAP. Everyone loves to feel needed.

3 Tips For Managing Volunteers

  1. Have clear expectations – Have a clear volunteer policy or ‘job description’ that outlines your expectations. Your volunteers will then know what to expect when they get into it.
  2. Get feedback – Meet with your volunteers after sessions so they can know and share immediately what they think worked well and what didn’t. This shouldn’t take long, so they won’t get burned out by long meetings after a session.
  3. Meet regularly – Meet with your entire team regularly – weekly, monthly or quarterly depending on your organizational and volunteer needs. That way, they feel like they’re part of the team and ‘in the know’ about everything happening currently and in the future of the youth programming.

3 Tips For Maintaining Volunteers

  1. Give them breaks – Schedule breaks and sabbaticals into your volunteer job description or policy so they know they will be able to have a break.
  2. Be professional and reliable – Treat them professionally by being on time for meetings and sessions, calling them, making sure they have their resources and valuing their input.
  3. Incentivize them – Give them incentives in the form of training, particularly with useful and transferable skills like computer skills, people management skills and youth work skills. This can help make up for the fact that they aren’t getting paid, but can still build up their resume or CV.

Here is a bonus tip which applies to each step in recruiting, maintaining and managing volunteers:

APPRECIATE THEM

Find ways to thank your volunteers through calls, texts, cards, dinners, gifts, coffees, recognition nights, opportunities for growth/development etc. Whatever you can do to let them know you value them will go a long way in making sure they get involved and stay engaged for the long haul.

Find out from your volunteers how they feel most appreciated and then do that for them. This doesn’t have to cost you a lot of money, but it will cost you time. The investment of time is well worth it though when you have a team of committed and happy volunteer youth workers.

Question: What tips do you have for recruiting, managing and maintaining volunteers in your youth work or youth ministry? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

You can also connect with us by:

  1. Signing up to receive our posts via email
  2. Following us on Twitter
  3. Liking us on Facebook
  4. Signing up to our RSS feed

 

What Should I Do With A Volunteer Who Had A Relationship With A Young Person?

By Leave a Comment

Volunteer relationship with young personQ: Is it appropriate to sack (fire) a youth worker for a relationship with a youth in the group?

A: Why, yes. Yes it is.

 

 

Easiest Q & A ever! OK, so maybe not.

You may also want to consider these three things:

1. Laws – You need to research the local laws where you live. You might not only need to fire them, you may also need to call the police and/or social services. If you are a youth worker where there aren’t clearly defined laws about adult and youth/child relationships, you may want to become a champion or advocate for the safety of the young people in your city or country.

2. Organizational Rules – You’ll also need to know the child protection procedures in your organization, as they may have actions that need to be taken in addition to any local laws.

3. Demographics – Even if your worker is, say, 24 and the ‘youth’ in your college group is 19 so over the age of consent and therefore an adult, most organizations still have guidelines (written or unwritten, but clearly understood) that you don’t get involved with your ‘clients’.

This is of particular concern if those clients are considered at all vulnerable. That can be as obvious as having intellectual disabilities, but it can also be less obvious. For example, an incoming college freshman who doesn’t know anyone and is lonely is – in my opinion – vulnerable on some level.

While a rare exception may be made regarding suspension or probationary periods, most youth work organizations, agencies and governments have strict rules about getting involved with ‘youth’ and therefore you should fully expect to have to fire someone who is found to be in that situation.

Question: Have you ever been in this situation? What did you do? What are your organization’s policies? Let us know in the comments below.

You can also connect with us by:

  1. Signing up to receive our posts via email
  2. Following us on Twitter
  3. Liking us on Facebook
  4. Signing up to our RSS feed