MENTORING PROGRAMS

INTRODUCTION
Mentoring means different things to different people. Some people think of mentoring as an apprenticeship in which a young person learns a trade from an older more experienced adult. Others think of mentoring as a process in which an individual teaches and guides another through the formative years of life. Mentoring can and does include many of these dynamics. Although the exact nature of the mentoring relationship varies from program to program and over time, it is generally defined as follows:

A relationship over a prolonged period of time between two or more people where an older, caring, more experienced individual provides help to the younger person as he/she goes through life. [Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, 2000]

Mentoring is one of the oldest forms of prevention and its influence extends across many fields. The clinical mental health field focuses on bonding and the importance of a child feeling connected to a nurturing adult in the early years of life. In the adoption field, the need for attachment is of great importance, while in schools, tutors help support successful educational endeavors. In the juvenile and family court arena, Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASAs) provide support and advocacy for children in need of assistance. In the substance abuse field, sponsors are offered to individuals in need of sobriety just as in the business field new employees are teamed with older employees to support a successful transition into the corporate system (U.S. Department of Justice, 1998).

Mentoring as a form of prevention dates back to the late 19th century when the Friendly Visiting campaign recruited hundreds of middle class women to work with poor and immigrant communities (Freedman, 1993). But perhaps the most well known incarnation of mentoring as prevention began in 1904 with the founding of the Big Brothers/Big Sisters Program (BB/BS). The original purpose of the BB/BS was to connect middle class adults with disadvantaged youth to provide socialization, guidance, and positive role models. Today, the BB/BS program contains more than 500 adults serving children and adolescents with its mission "to make a difference in the lives of young people, primarily through a professionally supported one-to-one relationship with a caring adult, and to assist them in reaching their highest potential as they grow into responsible men and women by providing committed volunteers, national leadership, and standards of excellence." (Grossman and Garry, 1997). It continues as the largest mentoring organization in the United States.

THEORETICAL CONTEXT
Youth today are faced with a host of risk factors that increase their chances of problem behaviors. Research indicates that effective prevention programs must both reduce risk factors that increase the risk of problem behavior and enhance protective factors that buffer children from risk. This "risk-focused prevention" strategy identifies risk factors and introduces protective factors at the earliest possible time to reduce and counter risks (Hawkins and Catalano, 1992). Thus, the goal of mentoring programs is to support the development of healthy individuals by addressing the need for positive adult contact and, thereby, reducing risk factors (e.g., early and persistent antisocial behavior, alienation, family management problems, and lack of commitment to school) and enhancing protective factors (e.g., healthy beliefs, opportunities for involvement, and social and material reinforcement for appropriate behavior). The strength of the mentoring concept comes from the fact that it can impact so many different risk factors and can support many different protective factors at the same time. In fact, the mere presence of a mentor "can provide a youth with personal connectedness, supervision and guidance, skills training, career or cultural enrichment opportunities, a knowledge of spirituality and values, a sense of self-worth, and perhaps most important, goals and hope for the future" (U.S. Department of Justice, 1998).

Resilience research provides clues to the possible reasons for the success of mentoring programs. Resilience is defined as the capacity of those who are exposed to identifiable risk factors to overcome those risks and avoid long term negative outcomes such as delinquency or school problems (Rak and Patterson, 1996). The two factors that are frequently cited as predictors of resilience are: 1) the presence of someone to relate to; and 2) the ability to generate that relationship (Werner, 1984). Similarly, these two factors are the foundations of the mentoring concept. As a result, resilience research demonstrates that at risk youth who are involved with at least one caring adult are more likely to withstand the range of negative influences, including poverty, parental addiction, family mental illness, and family discord than are peers who are not involved in a similar relationship.

EVIDENCE OF IMPACT
Mentoring can occur in two ways: informal and formal (Brown, 1996; Freedman, 1993; and Bernard, 1992). Informal mentoring results from frequent, unstructured contacts between mentor and mentee over an extended period of time. This often results from the youth's inclusion in a large social network where he or she is exposed to positive role models. Where these networks do not exist, formal mentoring programs have been established to compensate for the lack of positive influences or protective factors. Traditionally, formal mentoring programs can be either school-based or community-based. The basic difference between the two is that in community-based mentoring programs the mentor and mentee meet wherever the youth chooses. On the other hand, in a school-based mentoring program the mentor and mentee meet at a school in a supervised setting. An overview of the operational differences between school-based and community-based mentoring programs is provided below:

Source: Herrera et al., 2000

Research findings (Herrera, Sipe, and McClanahan, 2000; LoSciuto et al., 1996; Tierny and Grossman, 1995) from several formal evaluations suggest that mentoring is successful in producing positive effects. However, different program types provide varying results. In a study comparing the differences between these two types of mentoring programs, Public/Private Ventures (Herrera, Sipe, and McClanahan, 2000) found that mentors in school-based programs spend more time working on academics or doing homework with their mentees (who are more often selected based on their lack of school success). School-based mentors also have more contact with teachers and feel more effective in influencing their mentee's educational achievement. In community-based programs, mentors spend more time in social activities, have more contact with parents and feel more effective in influencing their mentee's social behavior. Another important distinction is that school-based programs deliver only half the number of mentor-mentee contact hours (6 hours a month, compared with 12), and are also significantly less expensive per youth ($567 compared with $1,369, annually) (Herrera, Sipe, and McClanahan, 2000). In summary, the results indicate that the "school-based approach to providing disadvantaged youth with volunteer mentors provides a promising complement to the traditional community-based model. School-based mentors report relationships with youth that are similar in quality to those observed among mentors in community-based programs. On the other hand, well-implemented community-based programs yield a wide range of benefits that may not be realized in school-based programs" (Herrera, Sipe, and McClanahan, 2000; 9).

Recently, owing to the scarcity of mentors and a desire to serve more youth, a new form of mentoring called group mentoring is gaining popularity. Group mentoring is based on the idea that volunteers who interact with small groups of youth can serve as a mentor by developing a number of fertile relationships simultaneously (Herrera, Vang, and Gale, 2002). Groups in these programs generally average around 10, but can range from two to 30. Groups meet in various settings, most commonly in schools, for an average of 21 hours a month. The activities that the groups engage are both structured and unstructured and vary in focus. The activities include: social activities, athletic participation, community service, and health and educational workshops. The activities are designed to focus on team building, leadership development, cultural diversity, educational assistance and in-depth discussions.

While some practitioners remain skeptical, preliminary evidence suggest that group mentoring may not be as powerful as traditional mentoring, it may be an economical alternative. In a study of three group mentoring programs, Herrera and colleagues (2002) found that 1) group mentoring attracts volunteers who may be less likely to volunteer for one-on-one mentoring; 2) the on-site programming facilitates recruitment of youth who may have been missed by more traditional recruitment techniques; 3) group mentors tend to place more emphasis on improving peer interactions; 4) the quality of the relationships varied widely were not as strong or intense as traditional mentoring; 5) mentees reported improvements in social skills, relationships with individuals outside of the group and to a lesser extent academic performance and attitudes.

Finally, not all mentoring programs are successful, researchers (Tierny and Grossman, 1995) evaluating the BIG Brothers/Big Sisters (BB/BS) program found that certain aspects of are essential in implementing mentoring programs. These include

• A high level of contact between mentor and mentee
  
  
• A relationship that defines the mentor as a friend rather than an authoritative figure

The researchers also found several factors that serve as prerequisites for successful mentoring programs. These include 1) volunteer screening to eliminate unfavorable mentors, 2) communication and limit-setting training for mentors, 3) procedures that take into account youth and volunteer preferences, and 4) intensive supervision and support of each match.

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References