Promoting Parents' Active Involvement in Finding Mentors for Their Children

In the U.S., many youth live apart from extended family members who might function as natural mentors. Youth from disadvantaged homes are especially lacking in support from informal mentors (Putnam, 2015). Some parents will reach out to groups like Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS), but not all requests for formal mentors can be accommodated (Schwartz & Rhodes, 2016). The goal of the Godparent Project is to develop and test a strategic model for promoting parents’ knowledge of and engagement in the process of finding natural mentors for their children. In this paper, we report a series of studies and describe current plans for creating and testing an intervention prototype.

We began with focus groups with parents whose youth participated in BBBS-sponsored community-based (CBM) or school-based mentoring (SBM) programs. Participants offered valuable insights into how they view the benefits and risks of mentors for children. There was some indication that parents of CBM youth were committed to formal mentoring but reluctant to consider informal mentors, whereas parents of youth in SBM matches—who typically do not initiate contact with BBBS—were open to informal mentors.

Findings from focus groups were used to craft surveys designed to gather added information on the perceived risks and benefits of informal mentors. Two samples of parents were used. The first involved 161 parents of youth enrolled in CBM or SBM matches; the second involved 425 parents attending a large state fair. Preliminary findings suggest parents see value in connecting youth with supportive adults but that most parents have little experience actually doing this.

Our latest effort involved developing an intervention prototype to promote parent involvement in finding mentors for their children. Conceptually, we drew from the Health Beliefs Model (Janz & Becker, 1984), the Parental Service Utilization Framework (Costello, Pescosolido, Angold & Burns, 1998), the Transtheoretical Model of Change (Prochaska, Norcross, & DiClemente, 1994), and Motivational Interviewing (Miller & Rollnick, 2012). We used a Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) approach and a daylong workshop with six parents from a low-income housing service and five youth-serving community volunteers. Participants generated important ideas for guiding parents (e.g., parents should avoid the term “mentor” when requesting support from other adults, parents should make very narrow, specific requests initially) and resulted in two different strategy concepts: One involved informal mentoring and one involved formal mentoring. We plan to present and elicit feedback on both strategies.