ECPN Student Poster Contestant: Why Parents Enroll Youth in Formal Mentoring Programs: The Role of Income, Family Risk, Perceived Supports, and Program Type

Introduction: Mentoring is a prevention strategy that has shown efficacy. There is little research on why parents choose to enroll their youth in formal mentoring programs. In community-based mentoring (CBM), enrollment follows parents’ proactive efforts to contact and enroll their child; for school-based mentoring (SBM), school staff typically initiate enrollment and parents’ simply have to consent. These differences suggest CBM and SBM programs could serve distinct populations. This is the first study to examine differences between parents of children in CBM versus SBM matches. The findings can shed light on which families are served by these programs and why parents seek mentors for their children.

Methods: A total of 131 parents were recruited from Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Canada who had a child matched in CBM (n = 79); or SBM (n = 52) programs. We assessed parent demographics, their top three reasons for seeking a mentor, and parents’ perceptions of family risk, interpersonal support, and community support. Family risk was assessed via a Risk Assessment. Social Support was assessed via the Interpersonal Support Evaluation List-12. Sense of community was measured via the Brief Sense of Community Scale.

Results: CBM and SBM programs appear to be serving different populations. Parents of youth in CBM were less likely to be married (p = .006) and reported higher risk (p < .001) than SBM parents. CBM parents were also more likely to want a mentor who could take their “children places and show them things” (p = .013). SBM parents were more likely to seek mentors who could help with academics (p < .001) or because their child has a physical disability or mental illness (p = .002). Parents who endorsed seeking a mentor because “My children’s father (or mother) is not in their life” as one of their top three reasons experienced significantly greater risk than those who did not.

Conclusion: These findings have implications for programming, outreach, and implementation of mentoring programs and suggest CBM programs may be reaching single-household families that are experiencing greater levels of stress than those of SBM programs. This suggests CBM programs may want to take these parental characteristics into consideration when recruiting and serving youth already enrolled. Prevention science may focus on recognizing these differences and developing ways to improve programs to acknowledge these differences. CBM and SBM parents also had different reasons for perusing a mentor for their child, which informs what types of preventive mentoring programs may be promoted to different types of families.