Friday, 14 January 2005 - 2:00 PM

This presentation is part of: Foster Care

Non-kin Natural Mentors Among Older Youth in the Foster Care System

Purpose: Increasing attention is being paid to natural non-kin mentor relationships with adults for youth at-risk for a variety of social ills, including youth in the foster care system. Some states have expanded mentoring opportunities to build positive relationships among foster care youth that can be important to their success as adults (Bell, 2004). However, no empirical research has investigated the rates, types, and relational characteristics underlying non-kin natural mentors in the lives of older youth in the foster care system.

Methods: This cross-sectional study, which is part of a larger NIMH funded longitudinal study, is the first to examine natural mentor relationships among older youth in the foster care system. Youths from eight counties in Missouri were interviewed over the phone near their 18th birthday regarding a non-kin adult they identified as influential and supportive. Due to the lack of research in this area, descriptive research is critical. Five research questions were addressed: How many male and female eighteen-year-old youths exiting foster care identify a non-kin natural mentor in the community? Where did the youths meet their natural mentors? What is the structure (e.g., duration) of these mentoring relationships? What is the level of relationship quality (high, medium, low) underlying these relationships? And, What factors are associated with the presence of a natural mentor? Quality of the mentoring relationship was measured by the Relational-Health Indices – Mentor (Liang, 2002) (a=0.82) and participants were split into three categories (high, medium, low) based on the sample distribution of this variable.

Results: Results reveal that 62% of the youth (N=242) identified a non-kin natural mentor. Youth met their natural mentors primarily through child-serving systems of care (37%), family (14%), friends (13%) and school (9%). In examining the duration of the mentoring relationships, we found that 70% of the sample had known their mentors for over one year, which has been found to be a critical factor in predicting positive outcomes for youth (Grossman & Rhodes, 2002). Approximately two-thirds of the sample reported seeing and talking to their mentor at least four times a month. Over half of the sample reported being in a mentor relationship with an adult who was the same race / ethnicity, socio-economic background, and / or who experienced the same problems. With regard to relational quality, 48% reported high relationship quality, 42% moderate, and 11% low. Finally, chi square analyses indicated that a significantly greater proportion of white youths and female youths reported the presence of a natural mentor.

Implications for practice or policy: This study reveals that older youth exiting foster care have important natural mentors in their lives both within and outside child-serving systems of care. Development of policy and programs to help sustain these relationships may be critical to long term outcomes for these youth. Further research in this area is critical to establish generalizability for these findings and determine the effectiveness of non-kin natural mentor relationships for older youth in the foster care system.

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