parents as partners - mentor · parents as partners •vital resource and partner in mentoring ......

Collaborative Mentoring Webinar Series

Parents as Partners Research and Strategies for Engaging Parents in Youth

Mentoring Programs

May 15, 2014


2014 Collaborative Mentoring Webinar Series Planning Team


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Today’s Webinar

• Andrea Taylor, Ph.D. (Temple University)

• Renee Spencer, Ph.D. (Boston University)

• Antoinette Basualdo-Delmonico, Ph.D. (Boston University)

Q & A throughout the presentation (use the Q & A panel)


Andrea Taylor, Ph.D.

Director of Training Temple University’s Intergenerational Center The Center provides training and technical assistance focused on building the capacity of non-profit organizations to infuse intergenerational approaches into service delivery and engaging people 50+ in connecting and contributing to their communities. Dr. Taylor is the developer of the evidenced based intergenerational mentoring program, Across Ages. She has provided training and technical assistance to over 100 sites across the country that have replicated the Across Ages model.


Renee Spencer, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Boston University School of Social Work

Renee received her MSW from UT Austin and her EdD from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. Her research interests include youth mentoring, adolescent development, and gender. Much of her research focuses on the relational processes at work in more and less successful youth mentoring relationships. She has published widely and her work has been funded by the William T. Grant Foundation (Scholar Award) and the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP).


Antoinette Basualdo-Delmonico, Ph.D.

Lecturer School of Social Work at Boston University Antoinette is involved in youth mentoring research and currently conducting a multi-state mentoring evaluation project focused on military families. Her research emphasis is on understanding the role that parents play in the youth mentoring relationship and has provides trainings to youth mentoring programs on family engagement. She has experience working with adolescents and families in schools and community-based organizations. Antoinette earned her PhD in Social Work and Sociology from Boston University.


Basics of Family Engagement in Mentoring

• An often overlooked aspect of running a mentoring program

• “Essential tensions” around perceptions in youth mentoring

– Parents “create” needs and “barriers” for mentoring

– Parents influence and facilitate benefits of mentoring


Where do parents and families fit?


Another view…

MENTOR

WORKER PARENT/ FAMILY

YOUTH

(Keller, 2005)


Parents as Partners

• Vital resource and partner in mentoring relationships

• What does this partnership look like in action?

• What are the opportunities and barriers?

We want to hear form you on this topic today!


Theories on Family Involvement

From the Handbook of Youth Mentoring (2nd Ed.) • Parental acceptance theory –Youth need this

before they can seek support from adults outside the home (Rohner & Britner, 2002)

• Family systems theory – Family dynamics and interactions influence individuals’ external relations (Kerr & Bowen, 1988)

• Systemic mentoring theory – Cohesive alliance of multiple caring adults is what is needed to produce outcomes (Keller, 2005)


Research on Parent Involvement

When parents are mentioned:

– Talked about by others, usually negatively

• Potential for sabotage

• Mentors as compensatory

– Serve as reporter of youth outcomes

– Parent-child relationship as an outcome of mentoring

• Parent perspective and experiences are largely absent (Taylor& Porcellini, 2014)


3 Types of Family Involvement

• Youth and Family Mentoring

• Youth-Only + Family Skill-Building

• Youth-Only + Family Activities

(Taylor & Porcellini, 2014)

Poll: Which type is your program?


Impact of Family Engagement

Across Ages: • Monthly social and recreational activities for all program

youth (MPS and PS);

• Program staff provided information about community resources; engaged parents in learning ways to effectively communicate with their children;

• Mentors reached out to parents to encourage attendance and help with transportation.

(Taylor and Porcellini, 2014)



Across Ages:

• Parents interviewed regarding knowledge of the program, satisfaction with children’s participation and perception of program benefit.

• Parents of children in the MPS (full treatment) group more often expressed satisfaction with the program when the mentor reached out.

• Mentors reported increased satisfaction when they had access to parents.

(Taylor & Porcellini, 2014)



Across Ages:

• Families of mentored youth reported:

Increased participation in school related activities;

Greater engagement in social/recreational activities as a family;

Increased awareness of community resources; and

More positive strategies for communicating with their children.

(Losciuto, Rajela, Townsend & Taylor, 1996)



Cross-Age Mentoring Program (CAMP):

• Quarterly “Super Saturday” events

• Academic achievement mediated by improvements in mentee’s connectedness to parents

• Time spent at (and in transit to) program events increased parent-mentee interaction and bonding

• Events provide additional time with mentor

(Karcher, 2008, 2012)


How do programs interact with parents?

Involving Engaging and Serving Collaborating

Primary Goal

Improve agency-family communication

Address needs of family to support mentoring relationship

Partner with parents in mentoring process

View of Families

Potential road blocks in the mentoring process

Challenged and in need of support and coaching

Experts on child, assets to be leveraged to support mentoring process

Practices *Gauge parental commitment

*Convey expectations and importance of parental role

*Involve parents in agency-sponsored events

*Involvement is responsibility of parent

*Reduce number of staff families interface with

*Build relationships with families (Home visits)

*Direct service to families *Broker relationships with

community resources *Coach families for good

reporting *Build support between

parents (e.g., PACs)

*Parent-mentor meet prior to mentor-youth match

*Stress importance parent and mentor communication

*Coach parents and mentors to increase mutual understanding

*Facilitate relationships between all parties involved in mentoring process

(Spencer & Basualdo-Delmonico, 2014)


Involving

“I stress to [parents] from the very beginning how important their role is.….We stress the safety issue,…’Okay. Make sure you find out from your child what they do.’ …. It shouldn’t be like when I call that one month you’re going to say, ‘Oh, I don’t know what they did.’ That’s something you should at least be armed with—information.”



Engaging and Serving

“…healthy children can only grow up in healthy homes and healthy families…And most of our families are very, very challenged and we cannot disregard the substance abuse, mental health and domestic violence issues to say nothing of the extreme poverty that we’re seeing these days. We cannot disregard those and just look at the child, that simply does not work. So we have to deal with the entire family system… help …[them] identify… strengths and …challenges and to help them figure out how to meet some of those challenges.” (Spencer & Basualdo-Delmonico, 2014)


Collaborating

“We start from the perspective that all families have strengths and that they are our partners in this endeavor. ….we begin by helping the family identify their strengths. That’s always the jumping off point and that’s what helps us begin to establish a relationship with the family and then everything we do is built on that relationship. .… That philosophy then is part of every phase of the work we do.”



Poll!

Which interaction style best describes your program?


Engagement Points

In what areas are families intentionally involved in your mentoring program and for what purpose? • Mentor selection • Orientation • Training • Match support • Closure process • Advisory capacity • Others?


Power Dynamics with Parents

What mentoring often looks like…

YOUTH MENTOR PROGRAM

STAFF

• Ethnic minority • Growing up in

Poverty • From a single-

parent home

• White, non-Hispanic • Upper-class

background • College educated • No children at home

• White, non-Hispanic

• College educated


What do we see in this picture?


Views of Low-Income Families

• Deficit Model (Valencia, 1997)

– Problem focused

– Problems are concentrated in the individual

• Strength-Based Approach (Saleeby, 2000)

– Focuses on assets of the individuals any supports that surround the individual

– Focus on building capacity and empowerment


Reflections and Questions

• What questions do you have?

• What are your best strategies for engaging parents?

Next up: What do parents think about you?...


Parent Hopes and Expectations

• Mentor-Child Relationship

– Additional positive adult role model

– Confidant

– Experiences and opportunities that broaden child’s sense of self and future

“I’d like my son to experience new things and kind of break out of his shell.”

(Spencer, Basualdo-Delmonico, & Lewis, 2011)


Parent Hopes and Expectations

• Parent-Mentor Relationship – Open, consistent communication

– Personal relationship

“I …got to meet him, and I got comfortable, and I liked the idea that they were gonna spend time together.… I could trust that he was not gonna steer my kid in the

wrong direction.”

“if she’s building this relationship with my daughter, then she’s gonna be part of this family, too.”



Building Trust and Satisfaction

Clear commitment to mentoring relationship “Where I get upset, is if you’re disappointing my child, and you’re not

in communication with her and she’s asking me about you and I don’t know what to tell her. …that upsets me because it upsets her.”

Genuine positive regard and respect

“that level of conscientiousness really shows me that she respects my daughter”

Respect for parental guidelines

“I told her at any point in time she feels… that she’s [the child] gettin’ out of control, or gettin’ ready to escalate, just bring her

home. ... So she did.”



Parent Roles: Collaborator

• Took an active role engaging in the mentoring relationship, working together with the mentor to help facilitate the development and promote the efficacy of the relationship “[the mentor] looks at… things in a different way.

Like if I come to [mentor] and I say to her, ‘Well, [child] has such and such a problem in this area. And she like, ‘Well, okay.’ She will say, ‘I’ll talk to her and stuff and then try to get things going and stuff.’ And then she’d come back and relate it to me and find out, you know,

we work as a team like too.”



Parent Roles: Coach

• Offered guidance for relationship and even for younger mentor’s own lives

“(the mentor) kinda looking to me as, ‘Okay, what should I do here?’…it’s sort of,

um…makes me realize, Okay, well this is a person who’s a little bit younger and I really

have to be able to tell him what to do or expect. Because he’s a 19 year old.”



Parent Roles: Mediator

• Took action to protect their child’s interests – attempting to preserve or in some cases end the relationship

“there was a period where she was not as, …as communicative as I would have hoped she’d been?...so, I talked to her about that….And, she was very apologetic, and she was very good about… you know, they haven’t seen each other every week ….But, she’s very good about calling.”

“[the mentor] did, at times, you know, have to work hard … but I just always told [child] I basically said, you know, ‘He’s a student and ….there’re gonna be many times when he’s just gonna be completely out, and you just gotta just wait and he’ll be back.’ So, I think the fact that I told him that reinforced his trust and he knew that it would work out ‘cause I said, ‘You know, you can call, but I believe this is what’s going on’ ”



Parent-Mentor Relationships

• Working PM relationship – Mutual satisfaction with level of communication and

closeness (regardless of amount of communication or degree of closeness)

• Non-Working PM relationship – Both parent and mentor dissatisfied with level of

communication or degree of closeness – Disconnect between what they desire and what

they experience in the relationship

• Out-of-Sync PM relationship – One member satisfied while other dissatisfied with

PM communication or closeness

(Basualdo-Delmonico, 2013)


Working

“He became part of the family, he’s real down to earth,…[The mentor] would come in and he would talk,

he’d talk with everybody in the house … we had cook outs and [the mentor] was part of,…he was like family, …if we needed to go to the store he’d go to the store,

…like that, just like family.… “ (Parent)

“…the family was just really inviting and really, … very warm, very inviting, …just sort of the same connection I

had with [Little] is like almost instant connection with the family so it was kind of cool.“ (Mentor)



Not-Working

“…when [the mentor] wanted to take him to his home, we did tell him that he was welcome to

come over here. And that didn’t happen. ...he said he wanted to go make cookies… with him….if you wanna make cookies, you’re welcome to…come over here and make cookies, …opposed to going

someplace I’m not familiar with.” (Parent)

“…it always seemed like they didn’t really trust me,…I don’t know why” (Mentor)



Out-of-Sync

• “…the downside was that, he and I never really developed a rapport like we would touch base through email

regarding…times and things like that, but I never felt like,…I just got a sense that he was never interested in talking to me…. when he’d come he wouldn’t come up,

[my son would] just go down, he’d pull up and tell him to come down or something.’ (Parent)

• “…she seemed, uh... at first, I wasn’t sure if she liked me.

But, you know, it just seemed like that was her personality, to... to come off like that, ‘cause she’s been,

…super nice,…and pretty…laid back about the whole situation and,... that’s all I could really ask for, to tell you

the truth.” (Mentor) (Basualdo-Delmonico, 2013)


Polls!

Have you asked parents and mentors about their relationship with each other?

Which term describes most of your program’s relationships?


Strategies & Recommendations

Understanding the program goals and mentor roles • Outreach to parents (orientation and

addressing barriers)

• One-on-one conversations about expectations

• Help parents reflect on their own mentors

• Provide opportunities for dialogue (Taylor & Porcellini, 2014)



Building trust between mentors and parents • Help mentors and parents appreciate their mutual

interest in the child

• Train mentors on effective communication and respecting boundaries

• Address mentors’ and parents’ fears

• Educate mentors around working with special populations

(Taylor& Porcellini, 2014)



Enhancing parents’ skills and confidence • Provide workshops to build parent skills (utilize partners)

• Conduct orientations for parents and mentors together

to facilitate knowledge sharing

• Train parents on managing their child’s challenging behavior

• Home visiting coaching and counselling (Taylor & Porcellini, 2014)



Connecting families to resources

• Identify and map community resources for parents

• Connect families to case managers and family counselors when needed

(Taylor& Porcellini, 2014)


Q&A

• What questions do you have?

• What’s working for you?

• Who are your key partners in this aspect of your program?


Additional Resources

“Family Involvement” by Andrea Taylor and Lorraine Porcellini in Handbook of Youth Mentoring (2nd Ed.) Across Ages - http://acrossages.org/ CAMP (Super Saturdays) - http://michaelkarcher.com/CAMP_site.html Family Engagement: The Secret Sauce for Successful Youth Mentoring Programs • http://vimeo.com/86735102

• http://www.mentoring.org/2014_national_mentoring_summit/

workshops/all_workshops/family_engagement_the_secret_sauce_for_successful_youth_mentoring_programs

http://acrossages.org/

http://acrossages.org/

http://michaelkarcher.com/CAMP_site.html

http://michaelkarcher.com/CAMP_site.html

http://www.mentoring.org/2014_national_mentoring_summit/workshops/all_workshops/family_engagement_the_secret_sauce_for_successful_youth_mentoring_programs










Additional Resources

Parent & Family Engagement in Mentoring Staff Training Handbook http://massmentors.org/sites/default/files/Parent%20Engagement%20Handbook%20MMP%20Web.pdf New research: http://www.albany.edu/chsr/UnderstandingParentEngagementtoEnhanceMentoringOutcomes.shtml

http://massmentors.org/sites/default/files/Parent Engagement Handbook MMP Web.pdf



http://www.albany.edu/chsr/UnderstandingParentEngagementtoEnhanceMentoringOutcomes.shtml




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After the webinar:

Please help us out by answering survey questions at the end of the webinar.

Everyone will get an email with information on how to

download the slides, recording, and resources on the CMWS webpage on the MENTOR website:

http://www.mentoring.org/program_resources/training_opportunities/collaborative_mentoring_webinar_series/




Access CMWS Information All Collaborative Mentoring Webinar Series information for upcoming and past webinars

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