Youth Guard
The Youth Guard originated from a landmark ruling, Reed vs. PRT, in which parents of one of the first Wards raised complaints about the impact of the Wards program on their day to day life. The small group was put in place to act as oversight to ensure that the Wards were well treated and soon snowballed in size, drawing from television appearances, lucrative charity drives and mass public support.<ref>https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Swjz8BZZNE4bq6lTkHanTK4sJ-K_xVlFudxA16mYjH4/edit</ref>
It remains the third largest of the peripheral organizations around the PRT. The Youth Guard, as it stands, is a separate organization which maintains a different leadership, command structure, funding structure, goals and methodology than those the PRT employs. Over the course of a number of court rulings in the past twenty-five years, the Youth Guard has effectively won or negotiated for particular powers over the PRT offices.
Mission Statement of the Youth Guard:
The Youth Guard’s public mission statement, as it appears on their website:
To increase the personal safety of child parahumans, reduce their risk of physical, mental, or emotional harm, and to prevent sexual exploitation and abuse
To ensure that the child’s essential needs are met, and that the duties do not impact their requirement for food, water and sleep To ensure that the child’s peripheral needs are met, and that their duties do not have an egregious impact on their need for entertainment, freedom, self-esteem, or family To prevent the long-term harm to the children by way of a neglect in education To ensure that the child’s identity remains strong, preventing ‘boot camp’ grinding down of personality, brainwashing, cult-like manipulations, and sexualization of the costumed alter-ego To act as liaisons for parents who feel that the PRT is co-opting their rights To offer legal counsel to children and parents who have signed on with the PRT, when concerns lie with the PRT or other groups To research better practices on how to keep Wards safer
To maintain comprehensive data on the latest trends in abuses.
Coordinates national efforts in these areas through collaboration with non-profit agencies, government, industry, law enforcement, educators, and families The Youth Guard employs thirty thousand individuals across the United States, and is an exceedingly popular charity. 68% of those polled said that they believed they were directly supporting the Wards program by donating to the Youth Guard. 62% believed they were directly supporting their local teams. Youth Guard bumper stickers shirts and ‘badges’ are a common sight across America.
It is the Youth Guard’s prerogative to decide what penalty best fits the situation, serves the interests of the Ward(s) in question and is most likely to change the department’s behavior. The Youth Guard can offer a warning instead, but are not liable to without notable outside pressures.