Engaging Parents/Caregivers as Partners in Mentoring Programs

Engaging parent and caregivers in youth programming has emerged as a key area and emerging trend for youth service providers, regardless of programming. Recently, MANY’s Associate Director, Kristen Truffa, presented with Dr. Antoinette Basualdo-Delmonico, Lecturer, BUSSW, & Independent Researcher, at the National Mentoring Summit. The workshop, Engaging Parents/Caregivers as Partners in Mentoring Programs, focused on the growing body of research that supports parent engagement as an effective strategy to improve program outcomes. As parents/caregivers are an integral part of the mentor/youth match and are often the deciding factor for the continuation, or end of, the mentoring match, it is important that we consider how to truly engage them in the match and in our programming. MANY shared the experiences and success we have seen through our Mentoring+ model which integrates this promising strategy into practice. Dr. Basualdo-Delmonico highlighted key learnings from the growing body of research on family engagement in mentoring programs and how this can inform practice to improve outcomes for youth. The PowerPoint from the workshop is available below. In addition, Dr. Basualdo-Delmonico developed the Parental Involvement Assessment to support agencies in considering how they can increase family engagement in their mentoring programs.