Mentoring System Involved Youth

Barton, W. H., Watkins, M., & Jarjoura, R. (1997). Youths and communities: Toward comprehensive strategies for youth development. Social Work, 42(5), 483-493.
Society’s conventional response to problems of young people—such as teenage pregnancy, school dropout, substance abuse, juvenile delinquency, and violence –is to target a specific problem and develop intervention or prevention programs for individuals who manifest the problem or are at high risk of it. Research shows that overlapping risk and protective factors affect the occurrence of all these problems and that prevention strategies aimed at enhancing youths’ development, reducing community’s specific risks, and strengthening protective factors are likely to be more successful than programs addressing the problem behaviors themselves. Among such strategies deserving wider consideration are “comprehensive community initiatives” that crease collaborative partnerships among public officials, service providers, primary institutions, and citizens to promote the well-being of children, youths, and families.

Bauldry, S. (2006). Positive Support: Mentoring and Depression Among High-risk Youth. Public/Private Ventures.
http://www.ppv.org/ppv/publications/assets/202_publication.pdf
Positive Support examines potential benefits of matching high-risk youth with faith-based mentors. Drawing on surveys and interviews with young people who participated in the National Faith-Based Initiative, we found that mentored youth were less likely to show signs of depression than the youth who were not matched with a mentor. This in turn was related to a variety of other beneficial outcomes, including handling conflict better and fewer self-reported instances of arrests. The report concludes with a consideration of the challenges of implementing a mentoring program for high-risk youth and how they might be overcome.

Bauldry, S., & Hartmann, T. A. (2004). The Promise and Challenge of Mentoring High-risk Youth: Findings from the National Faith-Based Initiative. Public/Private Ventures.
http://www.ppv.org/ppv/publications/assets/171_publication.pdf
This report, the third derived from research out of the National Faith-Based Initiative (NFBI), examines how faith-based organizations designed and implemented mentoring programs for high-risk youth. Focusing on four NFBI sites (in the Bronx and Brooklyn, NY; Baton Rouge, LA; and Philadelphia, PA), the report takes up three key questions: How were the best practices of community-based mentoring programs adapted to address the specific needs of faith-based mentors and high-risk youth? How did the organizations draw on the faith community to recruit volunteers, and who came forward? And finally, how successful were the mentoring relationships—how long did they last and what potential did they show?

Benard, B. (1992). Mentoring programs for urban youth: Handle with care. Portland: OR: Western Regional Center for Drug Free Schools and Communities.
www.nwrac.org/pub/library/m/m_mentor.pdf
This paper examines the urban mentoring program movement for one-on-one relationships between adults and youth that continue over time and are focused on the youth's development. An opening section describes the rise of planned mentoring for disadvantaged urban youth, beginning with the appearance of mentoring in the corporate world in the mid-1980s and including a brief overview of the research literature on the mentoring movement and a description of national and state efforts to establish mentoring programs. A following section examines what factors make for an effective mentoring relationship; these include personalized attention and care, access to cultural and vocational resources, positive/high expectations, reciprocity and youth participation, and sustained personal commitment from the adult. A section on establishing effective programs offers the following seven guidelines: (1) careful program planning; (2) energy and commitment from the program manager; (3) institutionalization and integration of the program; (4) careful selection of mentors and youth; (5) matching adults and youth; (6) clear and specific goals; (6) training and preparation for adults and youth; and (7) ongoing support for mentors. A final section evaluates mentoring in light of peoples' great expectations for this strategy, warning that it is neither a panacea nor a substitute for social policy but simply a context in which to create the empathy and caring that is essential for building a good and civil society.

Big Brothers/Big Sisters of New York City. (2005). Transformation.
www.bigsnyc.org/pdfs/bbbs-programs2005.pdf
BBBS NYC has undergone a tremendous metamorphosis in its 101-year history. Our programs have continuously evolved to respond to the ever-changing challenges of our city’s youth: children with disabilities, teen mothers, children of incarcerated parents, youth in the juvenile justice program, youth with siblings in the juvenile justice program, new immigrants adapting to their new country, families affected by 9/11, youngsters who believe they cannot obtain good jobs, and children with school problems. This document describes these new and innovative programs.

Jackson, Y. (2002). Mentoring for delinquent children: An outcome study with young adolescent children. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 31(2), 115-122.
This study examined the outcome of a mentoring program aimed at minimizing conduct problems for young adolescent children at risk for delinquent behavior. The program was designed to give an alternative, pro-social role model for children with a history of rule-breaking and acting out behavior in school. Thirteen mentors attended weekly supervision sessions and were responsible for working with one at-risk child for 15 hours per week. Both parents and teachers assessed behavior change at four intervals. Mentors and mentees also completed several evaluations of the program. The parent-report indicated significant decreases in both internalizing and externalizing behavior in the mentees during and at the end of the program. However, no significant changes were found for teacher-reported behavior. The mentors indicated that participating as a mentor enhanced their learning about children and further directed their educational goals. Implications of the effectiveness of mentoring are discussed.

Jekielek, S. M., Moore, K. A., Hair, E. C., & Scarupa, H. J. (2002). Mentoring: A Promising Strategy for Youth Development. Child Trends.
http://www.mentoring.ca.gov/pdf/MentoringBrief2002.pdf
Interest in mentoring is at an all-time high, with these programs touted as a way to help kids who seem at risk for trouble get on the right track, and also as a way for successful adults to “give something back” to their communities. But popularity does not necessarily equate with effectiveness, which brings us to a critical question: Do mentoring programs work? Or, to put it another way: Are young people who participate in these programs better off because of this participation? To address these questions, Child Trends reviewed studies of ten youth mentoring programs, including both nationwide and locally based programs. Our conclusions about program impacts are based on experimentally designed evaluations. These evaluations compare youth randomly assigned to a mentoring program with a group of similar youth who were not so assigned. Seven studies conducted on five of these programs used an experimental design to evaluate the programs. Our conclusions about effective program approaches, however, are generally based on non-experimental analyses.

Wilczynski, A., Culvenor, C., Cunneen, C., Schwartzkoff J., and Reed-Gilbert, K. Early intervention youth mentoring programs: An overview of mentoring programs for youth at risk of offending. National Crime Prevention.
http://www.crimeprevention.gov.au/agd/WWW/ncphome.nsf/Page/Publications_All_Publications_Early_
Intervention_Early_Intervention:_Youth_Mentoring_ Programs_-_An_overview_of_mentoring_programs_
for_young_people_at_risk_of_offending
This document describes an Australian national project to audit and review mentoring programs to identify models and best practices and determine outcomes of mentoring programs with juvenile offenders. Methodology includes an overview of Australian and international mentoring literature, postal surveys, and telephone and face to face interviews.