The Role of Risk: Mentoring Experiences and Outcomes for Youth with Varying Risk Profiles

More and more, mentoring programs are being asked to serve youth with higher risks—for example, those in foster care or the juvenile justice system or youth with a parent who is incarcerated.This impulse is understandable: Studies have illuminated the varied benefits that mentoring programs can provide, including improving academics and relationships with others and reducing involvement in problem behaviors. Youth with higher risks are clearly in need of such support. While these youth are often viewed through the lens of likely future costs to their communities, they also embody enormous unrealized potential. With the right kinds of support, these young people could put themselves on a path toward bright, productive futures, and make vital contributions to their families, neighborhoods, and nation. Many hope that mentoring programs can help make this vision a reality. Yet few studies have examined and compared the benefits of mentoring for youth with differing types or sources of risk. The Role of Risk: Mentoring Experiences and Outcomes for Youth with Varying Risk Profiles presents findings from the first large-scale study to examine how the levels and types of risk youth face may influence their relationships with program-assigned mentors and the benefits they derive from these relationships. The study looked closely at the backgrounds of participating youth and their mentors, the mentoring relationships that formed, the program supports that were offered, and the benefits that youth accrued—and assessed how these varied for youth with differing “profiles” of risk. The study’s results provide useful guidance for practitioners, funders and policymakers who want to know which youth are best suited for mentoring and how practices might be strengthened to help ensure that youth facing a variety of risks get the most out of their mentoring experience. The full report is available here.