Mentoring Relationships for Teens with Child Welfare Involvement

Background and Purpose

Research on mentoring for youth in foster care is emerging and studies are beginning to shed light on the conditions and processes that may be required to optimize benefits for these vulnerable youth. Because of the interpersonal vulnerability and high potential for adverse outcomes among youth in foster care, great care and coordination is required for implementing mentoring programs with this population. Research suggests that traditional community-based mentoring may not confer the same benefits for youth in foster care, and that mentors with experiences in the helping professions tend to be more effective. A recent review of mentoring programs for youth in foster care found that almost all of the programs which had been evaluated utilized mentors who were agency staff or university students. What do these relationships look like and how might they differ from the traditional “friendship” model?  As we think about achieving equity, it is important to recognize that different methods might be needed to achieve equitable outcomes with diverse populations.

This study examined the nature and quality of the mentoring relationships in the Fostering Healthy Futures for Teens (FHF-T) program, which utilizes graduate students in social work as mentors for youth who have been maltreated and have open child welfare cases. FHF-T mentoring visits are designed to be intentional and incorporate skills training, but involve many of the same activities one would see in traditional community-based mentoring.

Methods

Participants included 87 racially/ethnically diverse youth (50% female) who were enrolled in the 8-month FHF-T program as they were entering 8^th-10^th grades. The majority of participants (N = 76; 87.3%) completed a project-designed survey immediately after FHF-T ended about their relationship with their mentors and their experience in the program.

Results

Mentees’ average rating of their mentors on a scale of 1 (“Friend”) to 10 (Authority Figure, like a Teacher or Parent”) was a 4.3 (SD = 2.8) with over a quarter of mentees rating their mentor a “1”. Participants were also asked to rate on a scale of 1 (“Not at All”) to 10 (“Very Much”) how much their mentor “challenged them to do things”; the average rating was 8.2 (SD=1.8). Finally, the youth were asked to rate how much they “enjoyed setting goals” with their mentors; one-third rated this “Somewhat” and two-thirds rated this “A Lot.” Youth-rated quality of the relationship was positively correlated with “challenged them to do things” (r=.44) and “enjoyed setting goals” (r=.5), and there was a trend for a negative correlation between quality of the relationship and friend/authority figure (r=-.2).

Conclusions and Implications

Because the FHF-T mentoring program has a more intentional and goal-directed focus, we wondered if this would make the relationship seems less like a friendship and whether this would be associated with poorer relationship quality. Results suggest that the mentees felt a stronger connection to mentors who felt like a friend, yet still challenged them and were able to help them enjoy setting goals, suggesting that different approaches may be acceptable and effective for different populations.