Prosocial Activities and Natural Mentoring Among Youth at Risk of Aging out of Foster Care

Background and Purpose:  Research suggests that the presence of natural mentors may ameliorate the risk associated with emancipating from foster care, though only half of foster youth have natural mentors.  Furthermore, there is a dearth of research exploring modifiable environmental contexts that may be associated with natural mentoring among foster youth with varying demographic and child welfare experiences. Such information may inform how programs better initiate and support helpful mentoring relationships for youth in foster care.  Thus, this study was primarily guided by one research question: to what extent is involvement in community-based prosocial activities (e.g., sports; hobbies, activities, games; organizations, clubs, groups; religious services) associated with the presence of natural mentors among youth at risk of aging out of foster care, controlling for demographic and child welfare characteristics?

Methods:  Using data from the Multi-Site Evaluation of Foster Youth Programs, we employed multinomial logistic regression to test the association between involvement in prosocial activities and natural mentoring among 720 foster youth aged 14 – 17 at risk of emancipation.  Because our data contained three distinct groups of youth who did not have natural mentors, we used multinomial logistic regression to simultaneously regress these three groups without natural mentors on the group of youth with natural mentors, which was the omitted reference group for our analyses.  Our multinomial logistic regression generated three logit models: (1) youth with no supportive adults vs. youth with natural mentors, (2) youth with only formal mentors vs. youth with natural mentors, and (3) youth with only foster parents vs. youth with natural mentors.  Relative risk ratios were used to compare the likelihood of membership in the non-reference group (i.e., groups of youth without natural mentors) versus membership in the reference group (i.e., group of youth with natural mentors).

Results: Controlling for demographic and child welfare characteristics, foster youth participation in hobbies/activities decreased the likelihood of having no natural mentors and no supportive adults by 57% (RRR = .43, p < .01), having only formal mentors by 60% (RRR = .40, p < .05), and having only foster parents by 49% (RRR = .51, p < .05).  Participation in organizations/clubs decreased the likelihood of having no natural mentors and no supportive adults by 42% (RRR = .58, p < .05) and having only foster parents by 42% (RRR = .58, p < .05).  Participation in religious services decreased the likelihood of having no natural mentors and no supportive adults by 43% (RRR = .57, p < .05) and having only foster parents by 37% (RRR = .63, p < .05).

Conclusions and Implications: This study significantly contributes to the literature by furthering our understanding of environmental factors that may facilitate protective natural mentoring relationships among foster youth at risk of experiencing poor outcomes associated with aging out of care.  Specifically, youth involved in prosocial activities (i.e., hobbies, activities, games; organizations, clubs, groups; and religious services) were more likely to have natural mentors, regardless of their demographic characteristics or child welfare experiences.