The importance of mentoring relationships among youth workers

Organizational leaders often work to retain their employees and teach them the knowledge needed in becoming future organizational leaders. The purpose of the study examined in this article was to determine how mentoring within Camp Adventure Child and Youth Services contributes to the development of students selected to deliver programs to children and youth worldwide. Strong evidence of mentoring and development were found in both the training and delivery of services. The results of this study are meaningful not only for the particular program studied but for all youth-serving organizations. Supervisors and administrators of youth-serving organizations should be intentional about developing and promoting healthy mentoring relationships to create positive environments for staff and the youth being served.     

Studying relationships in psychotherapy: an untapped resource for youth mentoring

Although the relationships that you form with mentors are certainly of a different nature from a psychotherapy relationship, there are some parallels and perhaps even core elements shared by these connections.     

Predictors of natural mentoring relationships among former foster youth

Based on a panel survey of 683 foster youth, the current study examined the respective relationships between the characteristics of former foster youth and various attributes of natural mentoring relationships, including the (1) likelihood that youth have a natural mentor, (2) relationship role (e.g., family member, non-family acquaintance) of mentors vis-à-vis youth, (3) frequency of contact between youth and natural mentors, and (4) emotional closeness of the youth-mentor relationship. Study results suggest that a combination of factors, including youths' social-emotional competencies and participation in social institutions (e.g., religious or service organizations) play very different roles in the development and maintenance of positive natural mentoring relationships. Collectively, the findings suggest several potentially important implications for foster youth and natural mentoring policy, practice, and research.     

The role of therapeutic mentoring in enhancing outcomes for youth in foster care

Effective service interventions greatly enhance the well-being of foster youth. A study of 262 foster youth examined one such intervention, therapeutic mentoring. Results showed that mentored youth improved significantly in the areas of family and social functioning, school behavior, and recreational activities, as well as in the reduction of expressed symptoms of traumatic stress. Study results suggest that therapeutic mentoring shows promise for enhancing treatment interventions.     

A parent's place: Parents', mentors' and program staff members' expectations for and experiences of parental involvement in community-based youth mentoring relationships

Youth mentoring has been conceptualized largely as a dyadic relationship between a mentor and mentee, with less attention paid to the role of parents. This study contributes to an emerging body of research on parent involvement by examining expectations for parents' roles in the mentoring process held by program staff, mentors, and parents themselves. In-depth interviews with mentoring program staff (n = 12), mentors (n = 30), and a parent or guardian of the youth being mentored (n = 30) were analyzed to identify these participants' views on the role of parents. Findings indicate that mentors and program staff were more aligned in their views and tended to be more focused on the ways that parents could potentially interfere with or otherwise disrupt the mentor–youth relationship. Parents' views were more varied and rooted in differences in both their individual values and beliefs about the role of a mentor in their child's life, their parenting styles and ways they expected adults outside of the family who were interacting with their child to engage with them. Implications for future research on parent involvement and for mentoring program practices are discussed.     

The rhetoric and reality of youth mentoring

Enduring and supportive mentoring relationships can powerfully influence the course and quality of adolescent lives. As mentoring continues to expand, community agencies are implementing alternatives to the traditional one-on-one mentoring mode. Such efforts may help to reach youth who might otherwise fall through the cracks.     

Youth evaluating programs for youth: stories of Youth IMPACT

Youth evaluators describe their findings from an extensive evaluation of forty youth programs in San Francisco. Interviews with current youth and the former program director provide insight into the promise and challenge of youth participation.     

Under the microscope: Gender and mentor–protégé relationships

Forty (40) depth interviews were conducted among Florida-based public relations practitioners to examine mentor–protégé relationship dynamics according to gender. Two factors, compatibility and structural features, are offered to explain successful mentoring in public relations and to suggest a strategy for maximizing its benefits. Moreover, mentoring facilitates career enhancement in five important ways (supplement to college training, validation and empowerment, deportment, networking, reciprocity) – and gender composition of vertical dyads seems to matter a great deal.     

Strengthening child and youth programs: A look at inter-organizational mentoring strategies

Community-based non-profit organizations rarely have access to research or evaluation evidence to inform their programs and often lack the capacity to gather or use this information independently. In 2016, Wisdom2Action—a network of knowledge mobilization (KMb) experts, policy makers and service providers across Canada—launched an inter-organizational mentorship program to facilitate the implementation and sharing of best and promising practices within community-based programs for young people. This article outlines the findings from a developmental evaluation of eight mentoring relationships. Drawing on the Promoting Action on Research in Health Sciences (PARiHS) model of KMb, we look at mentoring as a type of facilitation that supports the increased use of evidence and evaluation information by non-profit organizations and identify key themes that support effective organizational mentorship in this sector. Findings reinforce the importance of establishing connected relationships and understanding context in mentoring relationships, creating adaptive and responsive work plans, ensuring consistent communication, and maintaining a focus on capacity-building if knowledge mobilization is to occur.     

Sexual minority youth in romantic relationships: Associations with youth well-being

This study investigated differences in depressive symptoms, loneliness, and self-esteem for monosexual (lesbian, gay) and plurisexual (bisexual, pansexual, queer) sexual minority youth (SMY) by relationship status (single, partnered) and relationship configuration (same-gender partner, different-gender partner). Participants included 338 SMY (M_age = 19.10 years) who reported on their relationship status, partner's gender identity, well-being, and ability to confide in partner about LGBTQ issues. Results indicated that for plurisexual youth, single status was associated with greater loneliness; plurisexual youth with same-gender partners reported fewer depressive symptoms and marginally greater ability to confide in their partner about LGBTQ issues than those with different-gender partners. Findings reveal similarities across SMY while also highlighting some unique challenges among plurisexual youth with different-gender partners.     

Youth perceptions about parental spillover: influences and impacts

Work and family mutually influence one another. Whereas evidence supports the impact of spillover between these domains on employees and employers, less evidence exists about how it affects other family members, especially children. Using spillover theory as a framework, youth participants (N=111) completed a self-report survey to test parental spillover and work attitudes. Correlation and independent t-test analyses helped answer hypotheses about the role of family structure on youth perceptions of positive and negative spillover as well as on youth reports of anxiety. Results suggest family structure does impact perceptions of positive spillover and that youth perceptions of negative parental spillover is related to levels of anxiety. These findings are important since the impact of parental spillover on youth largely is absent from spillover research.     

Figures of youth: on the very object of Youth Studies

ABSTRACT

‘Youth’ as a social category is used and abused in all manner of ways across an array of fields, platforms, discourses and spaces, Youth Studies notwithstanding. When we talk about ‘young people’ sometimes we seem to be referring to different phenomena, depending upon our political interests, theoretical perspectives and research methods. This article interrogates how the concept of ‘youth’ is figuratively put to work. By suggesting different figures of youth, and inviting suggestions for more, I propose that tracing how they are situated in different ontological spaces can develop a clearer conception of our research object(s) and help reduce confusion and the possibility that we are talking past each other. The incomplete picture I want to paint of figures of youth, in quite broad-brush strokes, all inter-relate in something of a feedback loop, a material-semiotic assemblage that forms powerful affects for the ways that ‘youth’ is brought into being, how youth are researched, governed, co-opted and exploited.     

Natural mentoring among older youth in and aging out of foster care: A systematic review

Due to their histories of caregiver maltreatment, living instability, and potential attachment challenges associated with out-of-home care, older foster youth represent a particularly vulnerable group of adolescents at increased risk for a number of poor well-being outcomes. However, research supports the notion that a relationship with a competent, caring adult, such as a mentor, may serve protectively for vulnerable youth, and a nascent yet growing body of literature suggests that naturally occurring mentoring relationships from within youth's social networks are associated with improved outcomes among young people in foster care during adolescence and the transition to adulthood. This systematic review is the first to comprehensively identify, synthesize, and summarize what we currently know from nearly a decade of theories, concepts, and research findings pertaining to natural mentoring among adolescent youth in foster care. A bibliographic search of seven databases and personal outreach to mentoring researchers and practitioners through a national listserv yielded 38 English-language documents from academic sources and the gray literature pertaining to natural mentoring among older foster youth. We identified quantitative studies that have been conducted to test the theories and hypotheses that have emerged from the qualitative studies of natural mentoring among youth in foster care. Together, this literature suggests that natural mentoring is a promising practice for youth in foster care. Based on our findings from the systematic review, we make practice recommendations to encourage the facilitation of natural mentoring within child welfare contexts and outline an agenda for future research that more rigorously investigates natural mentoring among older youth in foster care.     

Youth participation in foster youth advisory boards: Perspectives of facilitators

Foster youth advisory boards (YAB) have the objective of promoting foster youth participation in decisions that are made about their lives. There is currently little known about how youth participation is conceptualized or implemented within or across boards. This qualitative study explored youth participation from the perspectives of 42 primary YAB facilitators in 34 states. The study's findings are derived from telephone interviews. A thematic analysis identified four primary approaches to youth participation, which we labeled as being, ‘Adult-Led’ (n = 2); ‘Adult-Driven Youth Input’ (n = 14); ‘50–50 Youth-Adult Partnership’ (n = 16); and ‘Youth-Led’ (n = 2). Within each of these approaches to youth participation, we present findings that explore facilitators' conceptualizations of youth participation, the strategies and program activities they use to enact youth participation, and the strengths and limitations of each of the approaches. Our discussion explores implications for YAB program activities, youth participation in child welfare systems, and future research.     

Preschoolers' perceptions of neighborhood environment,safety, and help-seeking

Studies that focus on children's safety and well-being often focus on neighborhoods as the unit of analysis, as it is within these geographic confines that children spend much of their time. Such studies have shown that neighborhoods directly and indirectly influence children's safety and well-being. Much of this research has focused on census data and/or caregivers' perceptions of neighborhood characteristics. Less attention has been given to the neighborhood experiences and perceptions of children themselves, especially young children. The current study utilized two techniques for interviewing pre-schoolers (aged 4 and 5): individual interviews incorporating drawing and focus groups integrating a story and a puppet. The current study highlights the important of incorporating children's perceptions and offers new measures of doing so. In the current study, very young children were put in the center of the exploration and the findings stress that children's experiences in their neighborhood were geographically limited. They talked about their homes, preschools, and the playground. In part, this finding may be indicative of the lack of child-friendly spaces and resources for children in the neighborhood. In addition, the current study shed a light into children understanding and ability to discuss safety and help seeking, which are key concepts to any future planning of prevention and intervention efforts with children. Delve into the individuals to whom children said they turned for help revealed extremely limited list of family members, which raises concerns about the support networks available to the children and their families. This study suggests that the inclusion of young children's perspectives may facilitate programs and initiatives aimed at improving their safety and well-being by identifying sources of protections and threat from children's own perspectives.     

A Qualitative Evaluation of a Mentor Program for At-Risk Youth: The Participants' Perspective

This article presents a qualitative evaluation of the first year of a mentor program for at-risk high school youth in a low income urban setting with high rates of youth and violent crime. Pre and posttest data were collected employing a standardized set of open-ended questions regarding the program and the mentees' relationships with their mentors. Overall there appears to be congruence between the mentees' expectations at pretest and posttest outcomes. Most were overwhelmingly positive about the program, developed a valued relationship with their mentors, and secured concrete benefits as well (e.g., employment and greater academic achievement). Two mentors who had a leadership role were also interviewed. Case studies of four of the adolescents are presented along with implications for practice.     

Adolescents' perceptions of significant adults: Implications for the Family,the School and Youth Serving Agencies

Though a variety of studies have explored adolescents' perceptions of significant adults, there is no clear sense of the implications of the findings for those who work and live with adolescents. This paper updates a recent review of the findings for the family, the school, and youth serving agencies. Parents are the most frequently mentioned significant adults, but their significance tends to be situational. Teachers are not frequently mentioned as significant. Implications are explored which discuss the possible relationship between the level of cognitive development of adolescents and the degree and quality of adolescents interaction with significant adults. Also the importance of adolescents interaction with significant adults is discussed as that rela tionship relates to the transmission and preservation of culture.     

Positive youth development within a family leisure context: youth perspectives of family outcomes

Although a variety of recreation programs provide valuable settings for youth development and should continue, the home should be considered the first and perhaps the most essential context for positive youth development. Family leisure experiences are purposively or intentionally planned by invested adults (parents) to create and maintain meaningful relationships and provide supportive opportunities for their children to learn skills and develop behaviors that will not only strengthen current family life but ultimately contribute to their overall positive development. The article presents family leisure research from a youth perspective and sets out the implications of the role of home-based core types of leisure that families engage in.