YPT Podcast Episode 45: Ministry to Students with Disibilities (Sandra Peoples)
It’s unfortunately easy for youth ministry to exclude students who are neurodivergent or who have physical disabilities. These students and their families often experience significant stress in at home, and the church can sometimes add to their sense of not feeling welcomed. This episode from the podcast features a conversation with Sandra Peoples about how youth workers and churches can better serve students and parents with disabilities.
Discussion Questions:
It could be helpful to start by talking about verbiage - what do we mean by disabilities and why is the community moving away from the phrase “special needs”?
When we’re talking about ministry to students with disabilities and those who are neurodivergent, it can quickly get overwhelming to really understand what we’re talking about. Could you give a basic overview of what these phrases mean for our listeners who are new to the conversation?
How should youth workers think about disability from a biblical and theological framework?
What are some unique stresses and challenges these families experience that would be good for pastors to be aware of?
Obviously, youth ministries don’t have the same resources and support as a public school to provide one-on-one aides and we haven’t usually received much training, so what are some ways that our youth ministries could realistically make some changes to be a welcoming space?
Most of the special needs students who come to youth group are likely considered mild/moderate in needs and are mainstreamed in their school classes, so they can often slip under our radar because there isn’t always something visible about their disability. What counsel do you have for youth workers that will equip us to better minister to these students?
Excerpt from the Conversation
Mike: Sometimes talking about ministry to students with disabilities can feel a bit like, “Well, my youth group is, we're just a small church, a small youth group. I don't have staff and I don't have training days for, for all this. I don't have the resources the public school has to be able to provide resources and assistance.” So what are some practical, realistic, attainable things that churches and youth ministries can do if they want to start growing in this area.
Sandra: The last census told us that one in five families in the US has a member with a disability. And so that's 20% of our population. In Texas, the average is like 13%, but it can go as high as 18% of the students in a school district who have IEPs or 504s, so that's the language we use. Special education and learning disabilities.
When you think about that number of families not having access to church or not feeling comfortable in church, that's a lot of people. And that should motivate us, right, to take some steps that we can take. And there are organizations across the country to help, like Joni and Friends. They have offices all across the country. They have a really helpful website. They have training videos. They have all kinds of stuff for special needs families.
And so, like you said, if you don't have an opportunity for training, you could send your volunteers a link to a video from Joni and Friends that says, hey, watch this video. This will be really helpful just to kind of give you an overview. Like, especially if you know, hey, we have a student and he has autism. Let's watch this video on supporting students with autism. And that kind of thing is helpful.
There are some things that we can do just across the board that help, even if it's ADHD or anxiety or autism — we call those invisible disabilities. You can't see them, right? Like it's not like down syndrome where there's physical characteristics. And so these students can hide those diagnosis. Their parents can hide those diagnosis because of their fear of isolation. So we don't always know that, but there's things we can do in our youth ministry settings that make it easier for those kids.
Part of that can be training the volunteers you do have. We talked earlier a little bit about buddies, like it doesn't have to be one-on-one. We call them floater buddies. And so they're just there to kind of look out for any kid. We, especially in the youth group setting, that's an opportunity for buddies to be there, but then they fade their support. And so they're not hovering over these teenagers. We're not trying to do anything to bring attention to them. They're just kind of there and aware and then they may set the student up for success and then they kind of blend into the background with the other adults. So we call that fading support.
A predictable routine is huge for students with anxiety, students with ADHD, and that doesn't mean you can't be creative and can't have fun, but at least they know, “When I get here this is where I'm going to go, this is what everybody's going to be doing. This is where my friends are going to be. This is what time we're gonna start.” All the more predictable we can make it, the easier it is fo these students who get comfort from predictability.
Their anxiety increases when they're not sure what's going on. And so even if the schedule changes, communicating that to say, hey, this is a special night because it's Thanksgiving, you know, or like Thanksgiving week. And so we're gonna do things that are a little different and we're gonna eat at, we're gonna eat all together, whereas normally you come and you get your food and you go all these different places. Like any little thing that's gonna be different, if you can communicate that to them ahead of time, that's super helpful.
The other thing I think that's big is just being aware of sensory sensitivities. We have sensory seekers and we have sensory avoiders. Sensory seekers need movement. They like loud music. They like flashing lights. They like all those kinds of things. Our sensory avoiders try to get away from all of that. They're covering their ears or they're trying to get in a dark corner or their chair — you know, those hard like folding metal chairs that aren't comfortable for any of us — but they're really uncomfortable if you have kind of like hypersensitivity in your body.
And so just being aware and kind of seeing an opportunity, like if there are opportunities for movement or if there are times where you can say, hey, “the lights are gonna be on for this part, but then we're gonna turn them down for this part.” And just kind of watching out for that, seeing how the kids are reacting. And if you have a kid who really can't handle it, then consider making some changes that help him or her feel more comfortable.
About Sandra
Sandra Peoples (M Div, PhD student) is the disability ministry consultant for the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, an adjunct professor for Liberty University, and the author of Unexpected Blessings: The Joys and Possibilities of Life in a Special-Needs Family. She and her family live outside of Houston, TX.
Resources Mentioned
YPT Podcast Episode 37: Serving Students with Special Needs (Bryan Barrineau)
Sandra's Podcast: The Key Ministry Podcast
Sandra's Book: Unexpected Blessings
Sandra on Twitter: @SandraPeoples
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