The British National Youth Agency (NYA) has a very interesting document called ‘Ethical Conduct in Youth Work‘ that calls itself ‘a statement of values and principles from The National Youth Agency.’ The principles of ethical conduct for youth work and what youth workers should be commitment to are:
1. Treat young people with respect, valuing each individual and avoiding negative discrimination.
2. Respect and promote young people’s rights to make their own decisions and choices, unless the welfare or legitimate interests of themselves or others are seriously threatened.
3. Promote and ensure the welfare and safety of young people, while permitting them to learn through undertaking challenging educational activities.
4. Contribute towards the promotion of social justice for young people and in society generally, through encouraging respect for difference and diversity and challenging discrimination.
From there the document lists ‘professional principles’ and states that Youth workers have a commitment to:
5. Recognise the boundaries between personal and professional life and be aware of the need to balance a caring and supportive relationship with young people with appropriate professional distance.
6. Recognise the need to be accountable to young people, their parents or guardians, colleagues, funders, wider society and others with a relevant interest in the work, and that these accountabilities may be in conflict.
7. Develop and maintain the required skills and competence to do the job.
8. Work for conditions in employing agencies where these principles are discussed, evaluated and upheld.
I wonder if Christian Youth work/ministry could or even should adhere to such statements. As I was rereading through these I couldn’t really see anything that I would disagree in practise. However, I do think the statements, if examined in Christian Youth work/ministry’s, would raise lots of challenges. Number 5 for example is interesting because a great deal of Youth work/ministry is practised in local churches were relationships are often very close between members and there offspring. Also, this could be seen to clash with the Christian principal of going the extra mile, were we open our homes and life’s to the people we work with.
I think one of the biggest challenges would be to youth NYA. Evangelism, from my prospective, is frought with ethical issues, especially the issues of the autonomy for the young people being ‘evangelised’. How much are they being truly empowered to make an informed choice and how much are they being given the hard sell, were do we cross the lines into manipulation?
I think it would be interesting to come up with a list of ethical principles in Christian based Youth Work/Ministry. I wonder how they would be that different to the NYA list… any suggestions?
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