"handing off a youth"

When a group is in a less controlled setting, where it is easy for a youth to get lost or disconnected from the rest of the group, assign each youth to an adult. Adults and youth should know that each youth should be within eyesight of one of the adults and the adult needs to know that they are responsible for that youth. Kids can't just drift from one group to another without a clear “hand-off.” In other words, if a youth wants to go with another group or one group decides to do one thing and another group wants to do something else so that some shuffling is reasonable and acceptable, one adult agrees to pass the youth to the other group and the other adult agrees to accept the youth. This needs to be explicit even if very informal. It is easy for the receiving adult to not know they have a new assignment or the sending adult not know they are no longer responsible for a youth and waste time searching for the “missing” youth.