Research into the strengths that support positive youth development show clearly that caring relationships with adults are protective for young people (McLaren 2002). Mentoring programs, based on this belief, are intentionally created relationships designed to provide this protective effect.
An evaluation of the Big Brother Big Sister mentoring program used a classical experimental design, with young people aged between 10 and 16 assigned to a mentoring program or to a control group in eight US states.
Of the 400 matches studied in this research, over 70% met three times a month for three or four hours at a time, 50% met once per week. The investigation found that the most successful mentors were able to develop long lasting and supportive friendships with the young people by making the time to establish and maintain trust, listening sympathetically and non-judgementally, and negotiating mutually satisfactory activities.
A key to successful mentoring appeared to be that, whilst most mentors ultimately hoped the young person they had befriended would improve at school and become more responsible, they put their effort and expectations into developing a reliable, trusting relationship. The volunteers gave priority to making the relationships enjoyable and fun for both parties. By contrast to these "developmental" relationships, the researchers observed a smaller number of "prescriptive" relationships, in which the adult volunteers believed their purpose was to guide the young person they worked with towards values, attitudes and behaviours the adult deemed positive. Adults in these relationships set the goals, the pace and the ground rules.
Adults and young people in prescriptive mentoring relationships found them frustrating and 29% met only occasionally. Only 32% of these relationships were still going at the 18-month follow up compared with 91% of the developmental relationships.
The other factor which supported the success of the mentoring program was the program infrastructure. Intensive supervision and support of mentors by paid staff was a key program component, and those sites which maintained regular supervision had the most successful matches. Other important facets of the program were effective screening of volunteers who were unlikely to maintain their commitment; mentor training that included communication and limit-setting skills, and guidance on how to build a relationship with a young person; and the careful matching process that took into account young people's preferences, families' views and volunteer wishes (Bernard et al 2001b).
Source: Excerpts, Ministry of Social Development - Report on Evaluations of Mentoring Programs. Young Males: Strengths - Based and Male-Focused Approaches. A Review of the Research and Best Evidence. By Helena Barwick, March 2004
