In the very best of times, “safety” is a loaded term for many of us. These times are not the very best. And, we still need to show up, co-exist, grow, learn, and be. How are we supposed to do that? 

The UUA has made some particularly relevant resources to address community safety in these times and help your congregation with discernment and action.

I cannot recommend more strongly this simple resource from Side With Love to look at community safety: Six Questions Congregations Need to Answer About Community Safety in this Moment. And there is a deep trove of resources and information available at our Community Resilience Hub.

Right now, it may feel like we’re drowning in crises and long-term, big-picture, structural planning feels impossible. And if all we can do is grab a tool kit and breathe, do that. Co-regulate as a community. Come back when you’re individually and collectively a little more grounded.

And. The crises will continue to come. We have a chance to create structures and systems that set us up to be able to navigate what life has to offer.

One of the places we can look to skill up our congregations is in the realm of “youth safety.” And that certainly does mean the guidelines your community writes up, ensuring the rule-of-three be followed, getting permission slips and waivers signed. AND, just like the resources and toolkits won’t keep your congregation safe from fascist violence, neither will a beautifully decorated covenant on the wall of the youth room make spaces as safe as possible.

We keep us safe.

The guidelines, the trainings, the conversations are all tools to skill us up as a community to see what safety looks like and how to support, encourage and implement that… and what looks like danger, and how to interrupt, limit and contain that.

What does youth safety look like? Certainly, it looks like following some basic practices in your programming that will include youth. It also involves general awareness and mindfulness around what it means to have a multi-generational space. Fun fact: When we make congregations more open, welcoming, and sensitive to youth and their needs, the congregation is more open, welcoming and sensitive to everyone. And, a space that is open, welcoming, and sensitive to the needs of the members is, in fact, a safer space.

Some generally solid questions to ask as you are making your spaces:

Who is present? Who is absent? Ask this about everything. Who is in your congregation? Who is not being reached? Who is on your board? Who is at the Social Justice Team Meeting? Who is being asked to move chairs after events are planned? Who is welcome at the table to design events?

I ask these questions in the context of youth. Are youth invited to be decision-makers? Is the input of the youth considered about programming? About worship? About engagement? Are their needs being met? When a decision is made that is in conflict with what the youth advocated for, is there honest, clear, grounded conversation about how and why the decision was made? We all sometimes advocate for something, and the decision doesn’t go our way. Emotional safety is tended to when we take the time to share how the advocacy was heard and what may be taken into consideration. Are policies and plans sometimes actually shaped by the advocacy of youth?

Also. Who are the youth who are showing up? Who is being served? Do you have accessible spaces? Are you grounded in anti-racist frameworks? Do you have an understanding of neurodiversity? Is your space full of queer liberation and ready to defend trans lives?

And, are your ministers and religious educators and pastoral volunteers skilled at holding the spiritual and pastoral needs of youth? Do your youth have the skills to provide peer pastoral care?

This list is not exhaustive and is not meant to be exhausting, instead to be encouraging. There are so many resources and community opportunities to grow, to learn, to encourage each other to take big and small steps. It’s not up to one person to know and hold all of this, not even one congregation. It’s our challenge, our call, as people of faith, as Unitarian Universalists, to work ever more to center Love. And to keep our love expansive, welcoming, and as safe as possible.

The good news, and the bad news, is that this doesn’t end when you’ve answered every question and taken every training and grown together as a community. The sacred work does not end. We must keep asking those questions of ourselves, and even exploring if the questions themselves are still relevant. Because new people arrive. New needs are surfaced. New understandings and approaches are developed. It may feel exhausting that the work is never done, that there isn’t a checklist to complete and be doing things the right way. I hear you. Let me offer you this reframe: there isn’t some secret you don’t know, some code you need to unlock. We’re all in this together. And we keep being in this together. This is hard and messy and wonderful and sacred work.

Together, we will keep being and doing better. And we will remember that we are loved and we are Love.

May it be so.