Overview

This review examines research on credible messenger and lived experience mentoring programs for youth and young adults. Credible messenger programs are typically designed to provide support to young persons with involvement in the criminal legal system (e.g., on probation) or related groups, such as those who have sustained injuries due to violence. Mentors in these programs are persons with similar life experiences and backgrounds, including in many instances having a history of involvement in the criminal legal system themselves. Lived experience mentoring is a broader and more encompassing approach and thus can be considered inclusive of credible messenger mentoring (Blum, 2021). Its origins can be traced to long-standing, related practices in health care and human services, such as Alcoholics Anonymous and employing persons “in recovery” within addictions and mental health treatment. At the same time, credible messenger and other approaches aligned with lived experience mentoring have clearly been receiving growing interest in the past several years from practitioners, researchers, and funders. Hagler and colleagues (2023), for example, recently called for programs to include more meaningful efforts to recruit mentors from marginalized communities and remove barriers to their participation. Likewise, both projects funded through the FY23 National Institute of Justice’s “Youth Mentoring Research and Evaluation” solicitation focused on credible mentoring programs (U.S. Department of Justice, n.d.).

Against this background, the review is organized around the following four sets of questions:

1. What is the effectiveness of lived experience mentoring (LEM) programs for promoting different types of desired outcomes among youth and young adults (e.g., prevention of delinquent behavior or further criminal legal system involvement)? How does the effectiveness of LEM programs compare to mentoring programs that do not utilize this approach?
2. What factors (e.g., program practices, backgrounds of participating youth and mentors) can amplify or diminish the effectiveness of LEM programs?
3. What processes (e.g., types of mentor-mentee interactions) contribute to (or impede) desired outcomes for participants in LEM programs?
4. To what extent have LEM programs reached and engaged the populations of young persons that they seek to support? How well have LEM programs been implemented and what is their potential to be sustained and scaled-up (e.g., through broader adoption)? What factors represent barriers and facilitators for optimizing program reach, implementation, and sustainability/scale-up?

In line with other recent reviews (Blum, 2021; Lenkens et al., 2023), a systematic literature search identified only a small number of studies that have addressed these questions either for LEM programs as a whole or credible messenger mentoring programs specifically. Notwithstanding this significant limitation and some notable areas of inconsistency in available findings, tentative conclusions can be offered pertinent to each set of questions. These include:

• Programs utilizing the credible messenger model as well as those in which pairing youth with mentors residing in the same neighborhood is prioritized hold potential for reducing recidivism and related adverse outcomes (e.g., involvement in gun violence) and possibly also for improving educational outcomes.
• Evidence is lacking to address the question of whether LEM programs are differentially effective compared to those that do not prioritize utilizing mentors with shared lived experience; the limited available findings on this question underscore the importance of not assuming that use of lived experience mentors will be either superior or inferior for facilitating desired outcomes.
• There is preliminary evidence to suggest that the effectiveness of LEM programs directed toward reducing involvement in the criminal legal system (e.g., recidivism) can vary substantially across even a relatively narrow range of participant ages (i.e., late adolescence vs. early adulthood). On the other hand, thus far program outcomes have not been found to differ appreciably based on a participant’s assessed level of risk for recidivism (e.g., low vs. high). Available findings that bear on this question come from evaluations of LEM programs that are oriented toward providing the young persons involved with relatively intensive mentoring and other support (e.g., wraparound services); it may be that such provisions serve to mitigate limitations in mentoring program effectiveness that in some cases have been observed for youth at the upper end of the risk continuum. Research has not yet tested this possibility, however, or systematically examined the implications that other features of LEM programs may have for their effectiveness. These include, for example, the types and amounts of training and ongoing support that are provided to mentors and whether mentoring takes place in a 1-to-1 or group format or some combination of the two. Likewise, the specific type(s) and depth of shared lived experience that mentors bring to their relationships with mentees, along with other personal characteristics (e.g., age), could be important influences on outcomes, but to date are largely unstudied.
• As would be expected, successful engagement of participating young persons in intended services and activities (e.g., attendance at group mentoring sessions) appears to be important for optimizing desired outcomes in LEM programs.
• Findings from several qualitative studies support the idea that shared experiences such as criminal legal system involvement and exposure to violence can facilitate close emotional ties between mentors and mentees and provide enhanced opportunities for positive role modeling. It also appears that mentors in LEM programs can draw effectively on their own experience to help mentees overcome reluctance to utilize supportive services (e.g., mental health care) and that interactions within a group setting can foster feelings of social connectedness and a sense of community among participants. The role of these types of processes and experiences in fostering desired outcomes (e.g., reduced likelihood of recidivism), however, has not been established.
• LEM programs, including those using a credible messenger approach, have had limited success engaging participating youth and young adults at intended levels. With respect to quality of implementation, limitations in mentor readiness (e.g., skills for group facilitation) and uneven participation in available training opportunities have been identified as challenges. Conversely, supportive supervision, allowances for flexibility in implementation, and opportunities for teamwork appear to be helpful. Funding and other financial considerations pose significant potential constraints on the sustainability of LEM programs and their capacity to expand. Encouraging exemplars of navigating such challenges, however, do exist.
• Efforts to develop, implement, sustain, and scale-up LEM programs are likely to benefit from a community-based participatory approach that engages representative young persons potential mentors, partnering groups and organizations, and other key stakeholders. This approach aligns closely with the fundamental importance that lived experience is assumed to have in the mentoring that takes place in LEM programs and thus seems particularly promising as an avenue for advancing the reach, implementation, and effectiveness of these types of programs.

To download the full PDF report, click here.