Closing the Gap: Using Youth-Initiated Mentoring to Address Service Barriers for at-Risk and Underserved Youth

Background and Purpose

Participation in mentoring programs is associated with a host of positive psychosocial outcomes for youth.  However, youth in foster care, juvenile justice systems, and youth who left high school without graduating are typically underserved by mentoring programs and, when matched, are at higher risk for premature endings. A social justice approach to youth mentoring necessitates distributing high-quality services to those who are most vulnerable and most likely to benefit.  Youth-initiated mentoring (YIM), an innovative approach in which youth select adults to serve as mentors in formalized matches, shows promise in matching high-risk youth and may lead to more enduring and impactful relationships. This study seeks to explain why traditional mentoring programs often avoid serving at-risk populations and how YIM may provide these populations with more access to mentoring relationships.

Methods

Thirteen semi-structured, qualitative interviews were conducted with staff from programs attempting to adopt YIM practices or serving as youth referral sources.  Programs targeted youth who were either aging out of foster care, involved in the juvenile justice system, or had left high school without graduating and were unemployed.  At the time of the interviews, mentoring programs had been implementing YIM for at least 1 year.  Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Coders conducted a thematic analysis to examine staffs’ views on the barriers for traditional mentoring programs in serving these at-risk youth and how they might be better served in YIM relationships.

Results

Staff indicated that traditional programs find it difficult to recruit mentors who were interested in and qualified to work with youth in foster care, juvenile justice systems, or those who left high school without graduating.  Program staff also indicated that these youths can be reluctant to form relationships with new adults and noted concerns about how the youths’ circumstances could impact relationship development. When implementing YIM, staff found youth were able to successfully identify mentors from their existing social networks whom they trusted and to whom they felt connected.  The staff observed that these mentors seemed to better understand the specific contextual factors facing these youth and were therefore more welcomed and impactful than would be a traditional mentor. Staff appreciated that YIM allowed youth to build social capital within their existing networks and felt that YIM was particularly well-suited to honor and encourage youth voice and choice. Staff also identified challenges to YIM, including nominated mentors not passing background checks and the significant shift in recruiting practices necessitated by this approach. While staff reported that YIM provided a higher match rate than traditional mentoring programs for these youth, participants still felt that traditional mentoring offered a back-up option for youth not able to identify a suitable mentor.

Discussion

Mentoring program staff perceive a number of challenges in matching at-risk youth in traditional mentoring programs. YIM has the potential to increase access and provide underserved, high-risk youth an equitable opportunity to benefit from formal mentoring relationships. However, implementation does require significant shifts in program practices.