Quality Improvement in Youth Mentoring Programs: Barriers and Facilitators to Change

Background and Purpose: Youth mentoring programs that employ a greater number of empirically supported practices achieve more positive effects for youth participants.  The Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring (EEP) is a set of practice standards based on a synthesis and translation of existing research on mentoring. The National Quality Mentoring System (QMS) is an initiative designed to offer state Mentoring Partnerships, intermediary organizations supporting the field, a systematic approach to help programs implement more EEPs to improve agency sustainability and program quality.  The QMS initiative, following a quality rating and improvement system model, focuses on guiding programs through a self-assessment process and providing tailored support, coaching, and technical assistance.

This paper reports on qualitative interviews with a subsample of participants in an ongoing, mixed-methods, randomized controlled study of QMS effectiveness.  A quality improvement implementation framework addressing content, context (internal and external), and process was used to investigate the research question: What facilitators and barriers to change do agency staff identify as they implement the QMS intervention?

Methods: Participants were staff (n= 25) representing 15 of the 30 treatment condition programs implementing QMS and 6 of the 8 participating state Mentoring Partnerships (n= 7) leading the implementation efforts.  Participating agencies were selected to reflect diversity in the mentoring field with regard to size, organizational structure, program model, and setting.  In-depth, semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted at least 15 months after QMS implementation began in the program.  Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and then coded thematically.  Analysis examined facilitators and barriers to implementing changes associated with QMS with particular attention to the content, context and processes associated with the intervention. 

Results: Program and mentoring partnership staff reported a variety of facilitators and barriers to implementing changes associated with QMS.  Overall, mentoring program staff acknowledged the importance of following best practices and valued the opportunity to improve and demonstrate quality to funders and other stakeholders through QMS.  Program staff appreciated coaching, technical assistance and materials offered by the Mentoring Partnerships through QMS.  Strong relationships between the Mentoring Partnership and mentoring program staff were viewed as crucial to facilitating QMS implementation.  Limited resources, particularly staff time, were consistently mentioned as a barrier to change, especially in smaller mentoring programs, those with volunteer staffing, or those where QMS not fully supported by the board or leadership team.  Further, staff turnover in both programs and Mentoring Partnerships slowed and sometimes fully halted progress.  Surprisingly, while most staff could identify how QMS recommended practices would contribute to program sustainability, many were unclear about how these practices could improve program quality. 

Conclusions and Implications: This study identified important facilitators and barriers to helping mentoring programs incorporate more EEPs through the QMS initiative.  Findings suggest that successful implementation relies on strong relationships between programs and mentoring partnerships, sufficient resources, organizational support, and appropriate training regarding the purpose and potential benefits of the intervention.  Future research should identify how specific facilitators and barriers to implementation affect the ability of QMS to create intended changes in agency sustainability and program quality.