Publication year
2018
Citation Title
"A positive guiding hand": A qualitative examination of youth-initiated mentoring and the promotion of interdependence among foster care youth.
Journal Name
Children and Youth Services Review
Journal Volume
93
Page Numbers
41-50
DOI
10.1016/j.childyouth.2018.06.038
Summary
Mentoring programs have been shown to be effective for many youth; however, youth in foster care sometimes have difficulty engaging in these program. Youth-initiated mentoring (YIM) is a type of mentoring where youth select the person to be their mentor, typically someone they already know, with the goal of creating successful mentor-mentee relationships with a high level of engagement by both parties. This study examined the impact of a YIM pilot program with results demonstrating a positive impact.
Key Findings
Both youth and mentors reported strong relationships with their matches; youth indicated mentors filled roles similar to friends, role models, or parents.
Mentors offered mentees a variety of supports such as appraisal, companionship, emotional, informational, and instrumental, with multiple forms of support in all relationships: mentees particularly appreciated the nonjudgmental aspect of mentor support.
Mentors particularly focused on providing a sense of stability for their mentees, which they perceived as lacking in many youth's lives.
Mentors and youth reported positive impacts by the mentor on the youth's psychological well-being, relationships with others, and future orientation.
Implications for Military Professionals
Collaborate with youth's social networks to develop formal mentoring relationships for youth
Educate potential youth mentors on concrete ways they may provide support for their youth mentees
Implications for Program Leaders
Offer support groups for mentors after matching in order to help them manage concerns or conflict
Coordinate between mentoring programs and agencies serving youth in foster care in order to facilitate successful mentoring programs
Implications for Policy Makers
Encourage the development of youth mentoring programs that provide youth with the autonomy to develop their own mentorship opportunities
Continue to provide support for youth mentoring programs for youth aging out of foster care
Methods
The pilot YIM program lasted for one year; program staff provided match facilitation and mentor training.
Matches were one-on-one, community-based relationships that met at least monthly and chose their own activities.
Youth and mentors each participated separately in one in-depth, semi-structured interview at the end of the one-year pilot program. Interview questions addressed experiences of the mentoring relationship, strength of the relationship, and what support the mentor provided the youth.
Interviews were transcribed and coded by a coding team that met weekly to discuss and ensure consistency.
Participants
Participants were nine mentors (66% female) and 12 youth (66% female) from 13 different YIM matches; not all youth or mentors from each match participated.
Youth were 16-25 years old (M = 19.17, SD = 2.59) and were 42% White, 17% Black, and 42% multiracial; mentors were 21-56 years old (M = 34.78, SD = 10.15) and were 89% White, 11% Black.
Mentors were people with whom the youth already had a relationship but wanted to spend more time, such as a teacher, social worker, church activity leader, or former foster parent.
At the time of the interview, youth and mentors had been formally matched for average 2.5 months (range 0.5 - 8).
Limitations
The study was cross-sectional and retrospective which limits validity.
Some of the matches had only been made a few weeks prior to the interviews, limiting the types of support and depth of relationship that could have occurred.
Staff reported to researchers that many youth who declined to participate in the program believed they could handle aging out of foster care on their own; this suggests that youth who participate and youth who do not may have differed in qualities such as self-determination or autonomy, which could affect generalizability of the study.
Avenues for Future Research
Collect data from youth and mentors at the beginning of the mentoring relationship and conduct several interviews throughout the program to understand the way the relationship develops
Evaluate the actual length of engagement in the mentoring relationship compared to the youths' and mentors' expectations of length of relationship at the beginning
Study the impact of youth's beliefs about independence on their willingness to participate in the mentoring program
Focus
Civilian
Target Population
Population Focus
Abstract
This qualitative interview study examined experiences of youth-initiated mentoring relationships (YIM) among youth transitioning out of the foster care system. YIM is an innovative approach wherein programs work with youth to identify adults within their existing social networks to serve as their mentors in the formal program. Participants were 13 mentor-youth dyads involved in a pilot trial of YIM in a mid-western city. Youth and mentors completed one-time, in-depth individual interviews. Narrative thematic analysis of the interview data yielded the following major findings: (a) youth overwhelmingly reported having a strong or very strong relationship with their mentor, (b) these relationships offered a number of forms of social support to the youth (i.e., appraisal, companionship, emotional, informational, and instrumental), and (c) the mentor was perceived to have positively impacted the youth during the course of the relationship in multiple ways, including the youth's psychological well-being, relationships with others, and beliefs about and orientation toward the future. These findings suggest that YIM is a promising approach for establishing meaningful and impactful connections that may promote interdependence for older foster care youth as they make the transition to adulthood.
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