Written by Alexa Evans, VIP-BOLD Initiative Intern. March 16, 2014

I attended a webinar entitled “Moving Beyond Clients: Creating Effective Youth-Adult Partnerships.” It was presented by Maria Sipin, a Health Communications Specialist, and Daniel Solis, a Training Specialist, at the Center for

Strengthening Youth Prevention Paradigms (SYPP Center), housed in the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

A youth-adult partnership can be defined as the equitable working relationship in which adults partner with young people to address the issues, policies, programs, and organizations that affect youth. An effective partnership will acknowledge the societal power imbalance between youth and adults, and work to change how societies think about and understand youth. Decision-making will be authentically shared between youth and adults, and the complementary contributions of each participant will be valued. Intentional, transparent adults must give up some of their power and have confidence in youths’ mental abilities to make decisions about their own lives. Finally, an effective partnership must be guided by ongoing reflection and evaluation, and it requires institutional commitment and change.

This type of youth-adult partnership offers several benefits. Some of the benefits for youth are problem-solving skills, leadership, self-reflection, empathy, flexibility, communication skills, planning skills, collaboration, autonomy, and career skills. Adults receive a tangible sense of passing along their expertise, mentoring skills, self-reflection, empathy, flexibility, and communication and planning skills, among other. Organizations can benefit from more effective programs, youth buy in and loyalty, a deeper impact on youth, a pool of creative and energetic talent, additional opportunities to reach their mission, and a greater sense of what the youth in their communities need and want. The goal of these partnerships is to help empower youth as individuals who can successfully navigate the world.

The fundamental problem impeding the development of these relationships is adultism, the belief system which views adults as the rightful holders of power in society and its institutions. For that reason, there is a need for adult allies who use their societal privileges and power to advocate with youth for greater power and responsibility over their own lives, in all contexts. This is a continuous process of working to understand the best ways to support youth. There is also a need for youth advocates, young people (12-24 years old) who challenge adultism by empowering themselves and other youth, while also taking actions for the rights of young people. Adult allies should support youth advocates in their efforts.

The presenters then talked about the Youth-Adult Partnership Spectrum, which shows different degrees of youth influence within organizations. An organization with youth clients is at the lowest end of the spectrum. There is no participation or input from youth; they are simply passive consumers of services. The next rung is youth participation, which is better but still not desirable. Youth are occasionally solicited for decision-making, but their input is largely tokenized. The next four categories incorporate youth more fully, and the presenters made sure to point out that you should not necessarily strive for the most extreme case, but for what makes sense within your own organization. The next type is youth involvement, in which youth provide regular input into decisions, but have no role in wider organizational decisions. Youth driven means that youth have substantial and meaningful leadership, even serving on the Board of Directors, and the development of youth leadership is a core part of the organization’s work. In a youth run organization, youth fill the majority of staff positions and manage the operations, and there is an explicit path for youth to become paid staff. Finally, youth led means that youth fill all major leadership roles, including CEO or Executive Director. The Board of Directors is made up of all, or a majority of youth, and adult supervision is obtained through an advisory board.

Some structural changes that can be made to strengthen youth-adult partnerships include adding youth to the Board of Directors, starting a youth leadership program, hiring youth as staff, creating programs for youth to transition into paid staff as they age out of programs, avoiding adultist terms (e.g. kids, future leaders), creating a Youth Advisory Board with authentic power, and including adultism when assessing other systemic barriers that youth face (racism, sexism, poverty, transphobia, etc.).