The Substance of Change: A Research-Practitioner Collaboration Helps Mentors Support Youth Impacted by Opioids and Other Drugs

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the trend of drug overdose due to synthetic opioids (such as fentanyl) has exploded. Mirroring this frightening statistic are equally disturbing trends related to increased misuse of various illicit substances by children and teens in the US. Over 50% of 12th graders reported having used alcohol, according to the 2020 “Monitoring the Future” study (NIDA). Vaping, while having leveled off in 2020, has also seen significant increases in rates of use over the past five years, with 35% of youth reporting having vaped nicotine or marijuana.

To address this challenge, Leadership Foundations (LF) asked innovation Research & Training (iRT) for help in providing training for mentors to address the growing needs of their mentees. From 2019 to 2021, in a unique research-practitioner collaboration, iRT committed to addressing this need by working closely with LF affiliates to learn about how the crisis was affecting youth in their communities, what resources LF mentoring program staff wanted, and what staff thought their mentors needed, to create and pilot this training in a program called Substance of Change. The goal was to develop a course to equip mentors to more effectively support youth who are either at-risk for opioid or substance abuse, exposed to substance use through friends and family, or in treatment or active recovery.

LF has served as a grantee of the OJJDP’s multi-state mentoring initiative since 2016 with 30 affiliates in 20 states and annually mentors over 1,000+ children and youth. iRT is one of the nation’s preeminent behavior science research companies, as well as developers of research-based products and services for youth mentoring programs. Over these past six years, iRT has been a research and training partner of LF’s mentoring initiative. Through the Substance of Change project, LF and iRT sought to address this opioid epidemic and drug addiction crisis through the development of youth mentor training that was research-based, accessible, actionable for mentors, and – most importantly – impactful on youth served by trained mentors.

Research continues to demonstrate the importance of providing mentors with quality, evidence-based training in order to develop effective mentoring relationships that lead to a more positive impact on involved youth. The training created by iRT for Substance of Change was guided by a strength-based approach that sought to equip mentors with the ability to talk with mentored youth about substance use issues, develop resources and connections for youth to cope with stress in a healthy way, and help youth develop and leverage their internal assets in dealing with risk and stress. Both national and local LF staff provided examples from their real-world experiences in supporting matches and feedback on each lesson.

The curriculum is comprised of five brief core lessons and two ancillary lessons, covering the basics of opioids and other controlled substances, and the various pathways leading to substance use. Additionally, the training dives into behavioral strategies that mentors can use to be agents of change in the lives of their mentees with the goal of developing assets in their mentees to support a healthy

lifestyle. Finally, the two optional ancillary lessons allow mentors to explore specifically how they can support mentees when someone close to the mentee is misusing substances, or when mentees are in treatment or active recovery themselves.

In 2019, LF piloted this training in three of its mentoring sites located in Dayton, OH; Lexington, KY; and Philippi, WV. These sites were selected based on the significant relevance that the opioid epidemic has played within these communities, and the youth served there in recent years. Throughout the pilot project, staff from LF and iRT listened closely to the staff and mentors in these three sites, by eliciting regular feedback from mentors and local mentoring staff who completed the online training, and integrated this feedback into subsequent revisions of lessons. The use of this iterative process in the development of the training ensured that the training addressed the felt needs of mentors and mentoring program staff, and that the training led to actionable strategies that mentors were equipped to employ when engaging with their mentees. Further, based on mentor feedback, iRT developed a set of “tip sheets” with action-items corresponding to each course lesson.

“Feedback from mentors about Substance of Change was that it gave them a context for understanding addiction and gave them empathy for what their mentee’s families are dealing with,” said Maggie Middleton, Program Director at the Lexington Leadership Foundation. “Giving mentors the tools and resources to talk specifically about what might lead to substance misuse helps them open a dialog with their mentees and have honest conversations about difficult subjects.”

From this initial pilot, LF has expanded the resulting Substance of Change training to its entire 30-site US mentoring network, with high hopes for the increased impact it will make for young people mentored in future years. According to the National Mentoring Director, Kerri Feider, “We know that everyone from Washington state to Florida is going to get the same level of high quality, standardized training for mentors and staff.”

Through the power of mentoring, the Substance of Change, is showing tremendous promise for addressing one of the most critical challenges facing our nation’s young people.

Resources:

For more information about the Substance of Change project and the Leadership Foundations’ National Mentoring Network, contact Director, Kerri Feider: kfeider@leadershipfoundations.org

For more information about innovation Research & Training and how to access the Substance of Change training for your mentoring project, visit www.mentoringcentral.net or contact iRT President, Dr. Janis Kupersmidt: jkupersmidt@irtinc.us.

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