Chance UK

In considering the key takeaways from the research on this program that other mentoring programs can apply to their work, it’s useful to reflect on the features and practices that might have influenced its rating as “Null Effects” (that is, a program that has not produced evidence that it achieved its core justice-related goals).

If you read enough evaluations of enough mentoring programs, eventually you will come across a program that looks really well-thought and seems like it should be impactful for the participants but when the results come in, it simply… isn’t (at least as far as can be detected by any of a host of outcome measures). This is the case for the Chance UK program, a nicely designed mentoring intervention for young people with behavioral challenges. The program appears to be well-designed, with many features that follow recommended best practices for mentoring services: The relationships spend three months getting to know each other and building a solid bond before starting to address areas of need; parents and caregivers are meaningfully involved in shaping the goals of the relationships and in supporting the work of the mentor; and the staff put together a nice set of activities that are designed to address all three domains (cognitive, identity, social-emotional) of Jean Rhodes’ conceptual model of how mentoring positively influences young people. The program also seemed to be fairly well implemented, at least in terms of the roles of the staff.

In spite of all that, the program simply failed to produce significant impacts on any of the outcomes they examined. In fact, they did not even get positive effects for any subgroups of youth they examined, nor did they get better impacts for youth who participated more fully in the program… So, what happened here? A few thoughts as to why this program may have missed the mark:

1) Tackling behavior challenges may take more application of evidence-based interventions. Scholars such as Jean Rhodes and Sam McQuillin have been making the case fairly strongly in recent years that mentoring programs seeking to “move the needle” on youth behaviors and address serious challenges students are facing may need to provide more than just “friendship” via a mentor. This line of thinking acknowledges that the mentor and mentee do need a strong bond and a relationship defined by mutuality, trust, and a genuine like for each other. But these scholars also note that promoting meaningful change in youth, particularly those that may have multiple risk factors and a host of challenging circumstances, may require the use of practices from non-mentoring interventions that have been studied and proven to be effective. The activities provided by Chance UK sound applicable to the goals of the program on paper, but it’s unclear where these activities were sourced and whether they were borrowing ideas from interventions known to be effective in getting young people with serious behavioral problems to better regulate their behavior. Given that the program seemed fairly focused and structured in a way that might facilitate positive results, one plausible explanation for these poor results is that the activities did not quite address the root causes of these behavioral difficulties. Perhaps these young people needed more than a mentor could offer—counselling or therapy or some other more intensive form of support may have improved the outcomes, either in lieu of or in combination

with a mentor. At first glance, this program seems like a good representative of the issues Rhodes and others have discussed. But behavior change is hard and a mentoring intervention like this one might benefit from borrowing more heavily from the worlds of child psychology and behavioral interventions.

2. Making an impact requires participation. As noted in the evaluation article, only about 40% of the youth in the program received the recommended amount of mentoring over the course of the program. For some youth, this was caused by delays in the matching process, while others simply missed many mentoring sessions due to school and family concerns or due to illnesses and holidays. This varied participation also extended to the group activities, with only about 44% of youth participating in those (and often only one). Those group sessions may have been a source of peer learning and engagement with other mentors that may have boosted the impact of the one-to-one relationships. And although the program seemed pretty successful in engaging caregivers and offering them support, none of that translated into increased participation by young people, let alone improved results.

It is unclear as to what drove the low “doses” of mentoring received by youth in the program, but it is clearly challenging to have maximum impact when so many young people are not getting the full amount of intended services. This is a good reminder to mentoring programs to rigorously track participation throughout the program and try and course correct early in the program cycle to try and avoid this type of result. One wonders if this program would have had stronger impact if those participation rates were higher.

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For more information on research-informed program practices and tools for implementation, be sure to consult the Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring™ and the “Resources for Mentoring Programs” section of the NMRC site.

Note: The National Mentoring Resource Center makes these “Insights for Mentoring Practitioners” available for each program or practice reviewed by our Research Board. Their purpose is to give mentoring professionals additional information and understanding that can help them apply reviews to their own programs. You can read this program’s full review on the CrimeSolutions.gov website.