Mentoring Youth Who Age out of Foster Care: Does Mentor Type Matter?

Background & Purpose:  Research makes a distinction between natural mentors, or caring relationships between youth and nonparental, supportive adults that occur outside of mentoring programs, versus formal mentors who are strangers to the youth and are assigned by programs in an effort to establish new relationships for youth.  Although this distinction may be particularly important for youth in foster care, little research to date has investigated this distinction.  Thus, the present study is the first to compare well-being outcomes and child welfare experiences among naturally and formally mentored older foster youth.  This exploratory study describes naturally occurring and formally matched mentoring relationships among a sample of adolescent youth in foster care and the association between mentor type (i.e., naturally occurring vs. formally matched) and youth demographic characteristics, child welfare experiences (e.g., stability, maltreatment, and living arrangement), and well-being outcomes (e.g., preparedness for independent living, school engagement, prosocial activities, employment, physical health, drug use, and violence/illegal activity).  We hypothesize that 1) foster youth with greater stability, fewer forms of maltreatment, and familial based living arrangements will be more likely to report the presence of a natural mentor, and 2) foster youth with natural mentors will experience improved well-being outcomes compared to foster youth with formal mentors.

Methods:  Using data from the Multi-Site Evaluation of Foster Youth Programs, we conducted chi-square and t-tests to compare youth with natural mentors (n = 355) to youth with formal mentors (n = 52) across key demographic characteristics (i.e., gender, race/ethnicity, age, and site location), child welfare experiences (i.e., number of placement moves, reentries into foster care, runaway youth, extent of maltreatment, and current living arrangement) and wellbeing outcomes (i.e., perceived preparedness for independent living, school engagement, prosocial activities, employment, physical health, drug use, and violence/illegal activity).

Results:  Youth who experienced more favorable child welfare outcomes (i.e., fewer re-entries into foster care, decreased runaways, fewer forms of maltreatment) were significantly more likely to report the presence of a natural mentor.  Additionally, youth with natural mentors were more likely to report increased school engagement and less likely to report drug use compared to those youth who reported having a formal mentor.  Naturally mentored youth had significantly more adults they could go to for some social supports than formally mentored youth. We found no significant associations between youth who reported having a formal mentor and improved child welfare experiences or well-being outcomes.

Conclusions and Implications: This study adds to the emerging evidence base for the use of mentoring as a protective practice approach to buffer against the negative outcomes foster youth experience when they age out, and lays the groundwork for the use of natural mentoring over formal mentoring, in particular related to school engagement and drug use.  This study points to the need for future research that more rigorously investigates this distinction. An investment in such research will help move the field forward in determining how best to serve older youth at risk of aging out of foster care and thereby improve their wellbeing.