The Youth Worker's Guide to Helping Teenagers in Crisis

Anyone who stays in youth ministry long enough will encounter significant crises. Family break-ups, substance abuse, sexual abuse, sexual assault, eating disorders, cutting, suicide, gun violence...

But without proper and immediate care, crises like these can cause years of emotional pain and spiritual scarring in students.

Rich Van Pelt and Jim Hancock want to help you prevent that from happening. Through their experience and expertise, you'll learn how to:

• Respond quickly and effectively to crises
• Balance legal, ethical, and spiritual outcomes
• Forge preventive partnerships with parents, schools, and students
• Bring healing when damage is done

When crises happenŃand they will, ready or notŃthere are practical steps you can take. Van Pelt and Hancock provide field-tested advice and specific, biblically based guidance for each stage of crisis. Keep this book on hand as your go-to resource when you need it most.



Rich Van Pelt trains and motivates thousands or educators, professional counselors, and youth workers every year in adolescent crisis intervention. His expertise springs from three decades of youth work and more than 10 years with youth in the Colorado Department of Corrections. He is president of Alongside, a Denver-based leadership training organization, and is national director of ministry relationship at Compassion International. Rich makes his home in Denver, Colorado.

As a youth worker, Jim Hancock experienced most of the crises in this book and has helped kids, families, congregations, and schools with crisis prevention and intervention. From his home in Leucadia, California, he applies that experience as a writer and filmmaker (Good Sex, EdgeTV), helping youth workers avert and respond to crisis.