Healthy Boundaries Are an Act of Care
Lessons from a Decade of Youth–Adult Partnership
Lesson 3:
One of the most important—and most misunderstood—lessons we learned over ten years of youth engagement is that the strongest relationships with young people are not the ones with the fewest boundaries. They are the ones with the healthiest boundaries.
That sounds simple. In practice, it is one of the most difficult aspects of youth engagement to learn—and one of the hardest responsibilities for supervisors to support.
Youth engagement asks adults to share power, build authentic relationships, and genuinely value young people’s expertise. Done well, these principles transform lives. But they can also blur roles if we are not intentional.
This is especially true when working with young people who have experienced foster care, family disruption, or other significant losses. For many youth, every trusted adult who leaves represents another experience of abandonment. That reality can make it tempting for staff to become “more than” an adult partner—to become family, therapist, rescuer, or best friend. Those impulses almost always come from compassion. Unfortunately, they rarely serve youth well over the long term.
This is a job. A deeply meaningful job—but still a professional role.
Adult partners occupy a unique place in a young person’s life. We are neither peers nor parents. We are not siblings, counselors, or saviors. We are trusted adults who walk alongside young people for a season, helping them develop the skills, confidence, and opportunities to lead. When we confuse those roles, we unintentionally create expectations that cannot be sustained. Jobs end. Grants expire. Staff move. Organizations change. When relationships have become overly personal, those transitions can feel like yet another abandonment.
Healthy boundaries protect both youth and adults. They create consistency, make expectations clear, reduce favoritism, and help every young person know they will be treated fairly. Just as importantly, they ensure that the support youth receive can continue regardless of which staff member is assigned to them.
What Adult Partners Do
Adult Partners Do…
Prepare youth for presentations, meetings, and public speaking opportunities.
Serve as sounding boards for ideas and decisions.
Share information, advice, and strategic guidance gained through experience.
Protect youth by following organizational policies, safety procedures, and ethical standards.
Hold all youth to consistent expectations.
Connect youth with appropriate resources when challenges exceed the staff role.
Encourage youth leadership without taking over.
What Adult Partners Don’t Do
Adult Partners Don’t…
Pick and choose who is held accountable.
Make themselves available 24 hours a day.
Become a youth’s therapist or primary emotional support or represent themselves as a parent.
Blur professional boundaries by acting as family members or peers.
Invite youth into their personal homes or social lives except within clearly defined organizational policies.
Promise things they cannot control or sustain.
Build loyalty through special treatment rather than trust.
Why Boundaries Are So Difficult
The hardest boundary crossings rarely begin with poor intentions. They begin with compassion: a late-night text because a young person is struggling, an exception to the rules because they’ve had a difficult week, a ride home that gradually becomes a regular occurrence, or a relationship that slowly becomes more personal than professional.
Staff—particularly those who are newer to youth work or who have not received clinical training—may discover that stepping outside their role produces immediate results. Young people respond. Attendance improves. Communication increases. Loyalty deepens. It can feel like evidence that they have found the “right” way to engage youth, even when a supervisor has cautioned against it. In reality, what often develops is dependence rather than empowerment.
The Supervisor’s Dilemma
One of the reasons boundaries are so difficult is that they are surprisingly hard to supervise. Supervisors cannot observe every interaction between staff and youth. Youth meetings often occur in the evenings. Phone calls, text messages, rides to events, and informal conversations happen outside the office. Staff who recognize they are stepping outside their role may not mention it—or may genuinely believe they are simply doing what is best for the young person.
This means the goal of supervision is not surveillance. The goal is creating a culture in which healthy boundaries are expected, discussed openly, and reinforced consistently. Rather than trying to monitor every interaction, supervisors should create systems that encourage transparency. Staff should be expected to document significant contacts, discuss challenging situations openly, and seek guidance whenever they feel pulled outside their professional role.
Supervisors should pay attention to patterns rather than isolated incidents. Does one youth communicate almost exclusively with one staff member? Does one staff member become indispensable to particular youth? Are exceptions repeatedly made for certain individuals? Does a staff member become defensive when asked routine questions about their work with youth? Are important interactions happening outside normal organizational awareness? If a staff member leaves, do youth disengage from the program altogether?
None of these patterns necessarily indicates misconduct. Most begin with genuine care. But over time, repeated exceptions can shift the relationship from professional partnership to personal dependency.
One of the most important questions a supervisor can ask is not, “Did someone break a rule?” but “Who owns this relationship?”
If the relationship belongs to the program, another trained staff member can step in. Expectations are shared. Information is documented appropriately. Young people know they are supported by an organization rather than by a single individual.
If the relationship belongs primarily to one staff member, the risks increase. The young person may become dependent on that adult. Other staff are left without the information or trust needed to provide support. And when that employee leaves—as employees inevitably do—the youth may experience yet another painful loss.
The Real Goal
After ten years, one lesson stands above the rest. Youth engagement is fundamentally about relationships—but not relationships built on dependence. Our responsibility is not to become indispensable. It is to help young people discover their own voice, trust their own strengths, build supportive networks, and know they can succeed with or without us.
The greatest compliment to an adult partner is not, “I couldn’t have done it without you.” It is, “You helped me realize I could do it myself.”
Healthy boundaries are not barriers to relationship. They are what make authentic youth-adult partnership.
Article by: Kathryn Leigh Goetz