Speakers
Description
Authors: Charles Martinez (The University of Texas at Austin), J. Mark Eddy (The University of Texas at Austin)
Background: For over a century, relationship-based youth mentoring has been a frequently employed preventive intervention in the U.S., particularly for children who are perceived to be “at risk” for problematic outcomes, such as involvement with the juvenile justice system. Most youth mentoring programs deliver services to a given youth over a relatively brief period of time (i.e., less than one year) and through adult volunteers. An alternative model is for mentoring to be grounded in enduring relationships with adults who are paid professionals who specialize in youth development and who receive not only initial and continuing education training but also ongoing supervision and support to assist them in their work with children, families, and the systems that children and families interact with on a day-to-day basis, such as schools.
Method: The most widespread and lasting example of professional mentoring in the US is Friends of the Children, a 12-year long program (i.e., from kindergarten to high school graduation) which began with 3 mentors and 24 children in Portland, Oregon in 1993, and today involves hundreds of mentors and thousands of children in 36 cities and towns around the country. In this campfire, we first discuss the scientific and theoretical rationales for professional mentoring, and the need to carefully consider important issues related to gender, race and ethnicity, and family income and education when conducting such work. We then describe the Friends of the Children program and the ongoing randomized controlled trial of the program in four cities in the US (N = 278).
Results: We summarize research findings from a wide variety of studies on the Friends of the Children program. To date, we find promise for this type of program for working with children growing up in at risk circumstances.
Conclusions: We discuss the implications of our findings. From our work on a recent book on professional youth mentoring, we highlight a variety of perspectives from around the world and the possibilities of this model for improving outcomes in prevention and health promotion efforts.
The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest.
| Conflict of interest | None |
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