Big Brothers Big Sisters of Australia - Essay Example

? Big Brothers Big Sisters of Australia: of Program. Review of Effectiveness of Youth Mentoring Programs of this type Student number ) Subject: Due Date: Tutor: Tutorial Time: The website of the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Australia states clearly on the first page: “We provide young people, in need of additional support, guidance and friendship, with a caring volunteer mentor, who is a long-term positive role model.” (BBBSoA, 2011) This sums up the scope of the organization, which is aimed at young people and has a focus on longer term interventions rather than short courses. The stakeholders are listed as “Bigs and Littles, Program Delivery Partners, corporate partners, donors and government” (BBBSoA, 2011) and schemes operate on a one-to-one basis in the community, or on a weekly meeting basis in schools. The latter is cited as requiring less supervision and having an ability to reach out to more young people while the former has the advantage of greater flexibility to suit individual needs. There are also specialist programs for young refugees, young adults in transition to further education or employment, and young achievers who are excelling either academically or in a sporting or artistic field. The organization operates programs in Melbourne, Wangaratta, Geelong, Adelaide, Perth, Sydnay and most recently also in Brisbane. A new development has been a pilot “GoGirls!” short program consisting of seven sessions of up to 2 hours each, aimed at building self-confidence and leadership for girls aged 12 to 14. Funding is mostly through company sponsorship and donations, and partnerships with assisting groups and organizations are actively sought. A large part of the organization’s work is in screening and training mentors, matching them up with young people, and monitoring and supporting the relationships that develop. There is also a requirement to maintain standards and documentation, including accreditation and safety checks to ensure best practice is followed. All programs have built in evaluation frameworks and the measures used to determine success and failure include levels of awareness of consequences of ‘at risk’ behaviour, level of misuse of alcohol and other substances, awareness of alternative initiatives, school or training attendance or employment rates, relationships with family and friends and interestingly “Establishment of a Sense of Future”. Mentoring has been used for many years across the globe, but thus far the literature on its effectiveness is rather mixed in its assessment. In a broad sense youth mentoring can be defined as effective if it “is a relationship that focuses on the needs of the mentee; fosters caring and supportive relationships; encourages all mentees to develop to their fullest potential and is a strategy to develop active community partnerships.” (Hartley, 2004, 10). The focus on community is important because these schemes cannot work without sponsorship from local firms and the involvement of local adults who can easily reach the young mentees on a very regular basis. Sipe conducted a meta-analysis of studies on young mentoring programs from the mid- 1980s to the late 1990s and concluded that “not all mentors or mentoring programs ... are equally effective” (Snipe, 2002, 251).One reason for this is that insufficient research is being done on the longer term effects of mentoring, and some innovative programs directed at specific targets like drinking, or using novel methods such as group mentoring are hardly being researched at all. Empirical studies have produced some positive results such as for example higher educational attainment levels and lower drop-out rates among students participating in mentoring program in Toronto Brown (2004), and reported improvements from teenagers across the United States who maintained enduring relationships with mentors (Grossman and Rhodes, 2002, 201) At the same time, however, there is clear evidence that some mentor relationships just do not work, or have a brief effect over a few months, and then are broken off early. In these cases there is a distinct possibility that the mentoring experience could do more harm than good, especially in the case of vulnerable young people such as those from single parent families where one parent has ceased to have contact: “ Such youth may feel particularly vulnerable to, and responsible for, problems in subsequent adult relationships.... when such adolescents encounter cues that relationships will not proceed, however minimal or ambiguous, they may readily perceive intentional rejection from their mentors” (Grossman and Rhodes, 2002, 200-201). In the light of these findings it is apparent that organizations who are involved in co-ordinating mentor relationships have a responsibility not only to screen and train mentors, but also to intervene and guide mentor and mentee through longer term contact. Some schemes have informal arrangements, but those which have a more formal structure, with regular times and a fixed location for meetings may provide more security for the mentees and more opportunity for the lead organization to pre-empt any such harmful rejection or perceived rejection. Follow up in the years after the mentoring is also an essential component, and it seems that organizations are over-anxious to meet maximum numbers of young people, rather than conducting in-depth research to establish what they are doing right, and what needs to be improved. The calls for more government involvement in Australia are surely a good thing in this respect, since the underpinning administrative resource here might enable more thorough monitoring of participation and effectiveness. The work of Rhodes et al, on finding ways of measuring effectiveness in mentoring relationships, suggests that the provision of companionship and simple enjoyment in a social setting may well be key factors but thus far researchers have tended to look at academic results rather than social outcomes. In particular a critical skill would appear to be “the ability to regulate affective experiences, both alone and in relationships with others” , or in other words “emotion coaching” (Rhodes et al., 2006, 693-694) In conclusion, therefore, it is quite clear that critics are not agreed on what constitutes an effective youth mentoring program, and so a key area for new programs to consider is how to build in more effective analysis. Clarity of aim and focus is essential, and training in non-tangible skills like affective management needs to be present too. Too much emphasis on traditional and easily measurable outcomes and “value for money” (Moody and Fisher, 2009) is understandable in a field which is dependent upon sponsorship and donations for its existence, but there is still a need for proper evaluation of all aspects of the program, and especially a study of the less successful relationships, in order to ensure that no harm is done to individual participants. References BBBSoA. Big Brothers Big Sisters of Australia Website. (2011) Available online at: http://www.bigbrothersbigsisters.com.au/ Brown, R.S. A Two-Year Evaluation of the Change Your Future Program at the Toronto Board of Education, 1991-1993. Toronto, Canada: Toronto Board of Education. Grossman, J.B. and Rhodes, J.E. (2002) The Test of Time: Predictors and Effects of Duration in Youth Mentoring Relationships. American Journal of Community Psychology 30 (2), 199-219. Hartley, R. (2004) Young People and Mentoring: Towards a National Strategy. Sidney: The Smith Family. Moodie, M.L. and Fisher, J. (2009) Are youth mentoring programs good value-for-money? An evaluation of the Big Brothers Big Sisters Melbourne Program. BMC Public Health 9 (1), 41ff. Rhodes, J.E., Spencer, R., Keller, T.E., Liang, B. and Noam, G. (2006) Journal of Community Psychology 34 (6), 691-707. Sipe, C. (2002) Mentoring Programs for Adolescents: A Research Summary. Journal of Adolescent Health 31, 251-260. Read More