‘She was like a mother and a father to me’: searching for the ideal mentor for youth in care

Abstract

Recent studies of youth in out‐of‐home placements have indicated that a successful mentoring relationship in care is associated with better emotional, educational and behavioural outcomes in adulthood. The goal of this exploratory qualitative study is to describe the profile of a staff member who is able to establish a meaningful relationship with youth in care through the perspectives of 20 young adults aged 21–26 who left care in Israel. Findings revealed that the staff member who formed meaningful relationships with youth was the staff member who was available to the youth and familiar with their personal backgrounds, who was able to see them as positive and trustworthy and to provide guidance and support from a non‐judgmental approach. One of the study's conclusions is that staff members who were able to transform their connection with the youth into mentoring relationships were those who were able to make the youth feel as if they were the staff member's own children, and as a result feel cared for deeply and loved. The discussion addresses the barriers in forming a mentoring relationship with a formal professional and the ways to utilize these mentoring relationship components more effectively within the care system.

In between formal and informal: Staff and youth relationships in care and after leaving care

“…The young adults' former counselors were also the ones with whom they stayed in contact years after leaving care. Staff's important role in the lives of youth in care was evident in earlier studies, both as a type of social support and as mentors serving as role models in addition to or as substitutes for their parents (Ahrens, DuBois, Richardson, Fan, & Lozano, 2008;Greeson, Usher, & Grinstein-Weiss, 2010;Sulimani-Aidan, 2016). However, compared with other countries, the unique organizational structure of educational settings in Israel leads to a much more dominant role of the social counselors, as our findings suggest.…”

“…For example, retrospective studies showed that all young adults who left care had staff members with whom they had formed a meaningful relationship (Sulimani-Aidan, 2016). In addition, separation from staff was perceived as one of the most difficult challenges in transition from care to independent living (Sulimani-Aidan, 2014).…”

Spaces of possibilities: a theoretical analysis of mentoring from a regulatory perspective

“…For mentoring to be successful, it is desirable for mentors to have a good understanding of their mentees' actiotopes, which include the mentee, their environment, and their interactions with their environment. 64,70,71 Mentors need to have an overview of which relevant processes are already regulated with regard to the mentoring objectives and how well these processes are orchestrated. In other words, they need to know which activities within the actiotope of their mentees form a functional regulatory network of processes to reach the mentoring objectives.…”

The contribution of mentoring to the life skills of youth leaving care in Israel

“…Although the presence of a mentor has been established as possibly promoting better outcomes after emancipation (Sulimani‐Aidan, ), most previous mentoring studies examine only specific aspects of the mentoring relationships. According to mentoring theory, the process of creating positive change in the youths' lives involves mentors serving different functions in the relationship and acting as parental figures, role models, and life coaches (Ahrens et al, ; Greeson et al, ; Greeson & Bowen, ; Sulimani‐Aidan, , ). Thus far, no study has explored the differential contribution of each of the documented mentoring functions in relation to the life skills of youth in care.…”

“…The mentoring literature suggests that different components in the mentoring process including quality, longevity, and type of relationships (natural vs. assigned mentor) play a role in their effectiveness (Ahrens et al, ; Greeson et al, ; Rhodes, Spencer, Keller, Liang, & Noam, ; Sulimani‐Aidan, , ). However, earlier studies that examined the relationship between mentoring and outcomes among youth in care included only some of the dimensions of the relationships (e.g., specific function and duration) rather than the various array of characteristics that define these relationships.…”