Youth Mentoring Programs: Worth Doing Right?

In 1995, Public Private Ventures, (PPV) a nonprofit, social research organization, published the results of a large scale study on the Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) community based mentoring program.* Researchers had found that after 18 months of spending time with their "Bigs," the Little Brothers and Little Sisters in the program were:

• 46% less likely to begin using illegal drugs
• 27% less likely to begin using alcohol
• 52% less likely to skip school
• 37% less likely to skip a class
• more confident of their performance in schoolwork
• one-third less likely to hit someone
• getting along better with their families

As they should have, these results absolutely took the social services and youth development communities by storm!  Mentoring was IN!  It was the IT THING of the 90's!!

Fast forward to the 2010-11 federal budget justification process when, citing marginal impact, the White House recommended total elimination of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Administration for Children & Families Mentoring Children of Prisoners Program (MCOP) -- $49 million in funding for youth mentoring.  This was a fatal blow, for mentoring and for youth.  The Obama Administration initially proposed eliminating the program because of evaluation data that showed it "did not have an impact on students overall in terms of interpersonal relationships, academic outcomes, and delinquent behaviors." 

Say what?  

Obviously, this begs the question:  Exactly what happened in between the release of PPV and the demise of MCOP?  

There appear to be 3 main reasons for this conundrum:

1. Ownership:  Big Brothers Big Sisters simply did not take credit for its own study results. This 100 year old "feel good" youth organization was so giddy and so validated to be proven effective that it happily shared its results with everyone and anyone who wanted to listen.  In early 2000 I personally remember presenting on the results at a workshop on successful youth development approaches.  I know that I didn't understand the implications of the message I was communicating.  We just wanted all of BBBS's partners and supporters and collaborators to spread the good news profusely.  It sounded like a good idea at the time, right?

2. Fidelity:  As a result, there was a sophomoric lack of fidelity to the model researched and reported on by PPV by the organizations that subsequently picked up the youth mentoring baton.   In it's study publication, PPV described that "to have strong positive impacts on children, only organizations that develop an infrastructure similar to Big Brothers Big Sisters model can expect similar results."  The program's success was attributed to the presence of staff support and the agency infrastructure, the "glue" of the mentoring process. This lack of fidelity, in hindsight, clearly diluted the impact of youth mentoring involved in the MCOP project.   

3. Accountability:  By the time that HHS funded its first MCOP grantees it had learned a few things about program fidelity.  Theoretically. Two Request for Proposals across 6 years demonstrated   knowledge and increased understanding of the components of effective mentoring programs.  Regardless, HHS was unable to hold grantees accountable to any real outcomes.  I personally witnessed this as a Peer Reviewer for the Administration for Children & Families.  The organizations I visited as a reviewer were struggling to achieve even the simplest of outcomes - such as mentor recruitment and match making, and a few were so clueless that they spent their federal funds on capital campaigns and other non-mentoring programs.** We "counseled" them and provided suggestions for future activity, but everyone got re-funded.   Running a an effective mentoring program turned out to be harder than it looked. Fewer than 50% of the grantees were BBBS agencies.

With regard to both ownership and fidelity, it's also worth noting that PPV initially set out to study youth mentoring in general, but found that other than Big Brothers Big Sisters there were no other mentoring programs capable of accommodating a large scale, longitudinal study of youth mentoring relationships. If there were so few qualifying mentoring programs to begin with, it was pure folly and/or wishful thinking for us to believe that qualified programs would just spontaneously form in response to research on one organization, or government funding revenue streams. 

A particular pain point for Big Brothers Big Sisters programs across the country during the 90's and 2000's were all of the organizations that suddenly developed mentoring programs (on the side), then called the BBBS study their own in grant proposals, and began to take funding away from BBBS' now validated, evidence-based, proven program.   The following is  a very short list of examples of such programs: 

• Scholastic advertising
• Schools
• The Foster Care system
• Nonprofits who start mentoring programs on the side
• Universities
• The government

I also have to point out that in this journey BBBS was definitely its own worst enemy.  When PPV told it how effective it was, it asked itself: "How can we do more of this great mentoring stuff?"  Faster?  And Cheaper!?   As if the PPV study said anything about fast, or cheap.  BBBS jumped off into a campaign to go from serving 250,000 youth each year to serving 1 MILLION kids.  It decided to do this through school based mentoring and the "wholesale recruitment of volunteers" from businesses and organizations such as colleges and civic groups.  As if the PPV study said anything about school based mentoring or mass volunteer recruitment campaigns.  BBBSA was as guilty of re-writing the rule book as any of the non-BBBS programs linked above or those who applied as unsuitable HHS grantees with good grant-writers.

Somehow, though, deep down, BBBS knew something wasn't right. In 2007 it asked PPV to do another study on its school based mentoring program, and it confirmed the fears:  BBBS school based mentoring was effective in the first year, but those gains for youth didn't translate to subsequent years because the mentoring relationships were not lasting that long. 

Across the nation BBBS leaders vowed to do better. (In San Antonio, we vowed to pull back on school based mentoring.)

MCOP was in its second round of 3 year grants when it was de-funded, and I felt the loss even more acutely than most, having served as a member of the National  MCOP Advisory Board.  All that work, gone.  6 years later, I still mourn the infrastructure we had built up to that point.  Children born into families plagued by cycles of incarceration have never had such promising federal attention before or since. With the loss of the MCOP program these kids continue to be 7 times more likely to be incarcerated in their lifetimes as youth whose parents are not in jail.  Just because they are born.  Talk about a raw deal. 

Big Brothers Big Sisters does one thing:  creates one to one, long term and consistent, face to face mentoring relationships for at risk youth.  Youth who do not have the support and guidance of adults that they need to grow up successfully. It implements no other programming. It struggles for funding every year and never meets the demand.  Tons of kid fall through the cracks every week, every month, every year.***  There is no funding source that values this service in any significant way.  I am constantly asked why the program costs money if it is based on volunteer mentors.  We do dumb things like try to compete by creating faster, cheaper mentoring relationship programs.  Despite every youth development book I've read, every focus group I've ever been a part of, every youth development collaborative, every mentoring research project that always finds that what kids need, really, really need, is the attention and support of at least one caring adult, BBBS programs across the country struggle.  

In case you have read this far and still have not clicked on the link that described the results of this landmark study, I provide a short description here:  For 18 months "researchers examined the lives of 1,000 10- to 16-year-olds who applied to Big Brothers Big Sisters for mentors. More than 60 percent of them were boys; more than half were members of minority groups, mostly African American. Over 80 percent came from impoverished families, approximately 40 percent were from homes with a history of drug or alcohol abuse, and almost all were being raised by a single parent. Half of these young people were matched with a mentor, while the rest stayed on the waiting list. Eighteen months later, the differences between the two groups were surprising: weekly meetings with a mentor for (on average) a year had reduced first-time drug use by almost half and first-time alcohol use by a third, had cut school absenteeism by half, improved parental and peer relationships, and gave the youth confidence in doing their school work."

Wow.  

We should keep these results in mind as we ask ourselves the critical questions for going forward:

1. What does a good youth mentoring program look like?
2. How can we assure fidelity to the ideal model? 
3. Are we willing to make this investment?   
4. Can we afford to continue to pay more for incarceration, year after year after year? 

Here are a few other learnings to ponder: 

• Is school based mentoring as effective as community based mentoring?   The research appears to indicate that it is not.   
• Is there a difference between tutoring and mentoring? Mentoring is not tutoring and vice versa.  Are there PPV-caliber studies on the effectiveness of tutoring?  There is evidence for the opposite.  
• Do you have a caring adult in your life if you have a Tutor or a PAL or a Buddy or a Coach or an Agent or similar "friend"?  Probably.  But does he or she have the same impact as described in that PPV study? Probably not.  

Check out the following really cool stuff in the links below:  

• This is a link to a series of 15 second PSA's that illustrate the power of a positive role model.
• This is an amazing video of a man who thinks he would be dead without his one caring adult.  

______________________________________________________________
* San Antonio was one of 5 participating cities in this study.

**Mission relevant programming.   Many MCOP grantee organizations drifted off their missions in applying for MCOP funding.

***One of the saddest things that happened this year was when we received a list of referrals from Bexar County Juvenile Probation of troubled boys aged 14-17 who had been previously referred to, and unserved by, our program years before.  I have no words for this failure.

Turn Up the Crazy*

I love an outdoor theater!

I attended a “Panic! at the Disco” concert with my 14 and 28 year old daughters this weekend in Corpus Christi, and what a different experience this was from my younger concert going days!  

First of all, I was not allowed to go to rock or pop concerts when I was 14.  Even at 16 and 17, I had to make up really good, verifiable stories about where I was and what I was doing so my parents would not find out.  Not only are the vast majority of parents today allowing concert going, and buying the tickets (including VIP tickets for “meet and greets” ahead of time, omg) but they are attending and standing patiently in the back like some posh butler-chauffeurs.**

The band came out exactly when it was scheduled to.  Is this normal today or is Panic! just very prompt?  My 14 year old didn’t understand the question. I realize that  in the 80’s and 90’s, my peak concert-going years, that most of the band members I was trying to see were extremely drunk or high or unconscious and had to be woken up or sobered up before they could play.  I‘m not suggesting that Brendon Urie and his bandmates should develop any bad habits, but even the ancient Eagles were 20 minutes late to the stage a few years ago when I saw them in San Antonio***.  There is something to be said for a little anticipation.

There is no dancing.  I have pondered this crazy phenomenon among kids today many times before, but I think I uncovered the root cause at this concert:  the smartphone.  Kids will clap a little, do the fist pump in the air, and some slight head nodding, but honestly, they barely move. I have video to prove it, and that’s how I realized what is going on here.  Most of my videos are all jiggly, because I can’t stand still.  These kids don’t move because they are always conscious of the video quality they want to produce. As someone who has documented her whole life, I kind of relate, but my videos are still jiggly.  But there is hope, as this wiki on How to dance at a rock concert or mosh pit shows us. 

There was a lot of shrieking, but the crowd never needed quieting down. It was ear splitting shrieking. It could have been The Beatles or The Monkees up there on stage.  But the amazing thing about it was that it stops on cue.  It’s like only 3-5 seconds of noise-making is allowed at the beginning and at the end of each song.  I was absolutely fascinated by this and caught it on video.  It's like: Woo-ho. Full stop. Quiet. 5 seconds max of cheering your band.  The band needs to move on to the next song, and the kids have to hear every word. 

It wasn’t very loud.  Today’s generation of kids are going to keep their hearing a lot longer than my generation.  The mom standing next to me at the back of “The Pit” and I carried on several conversations around what a civilized mosh pit it was and what polite fans they were. Not one body was catapulted out of the pit during the whole set. My ears did start ringing during a half decent drum solo, though. 

No one was smoking or drinking.  I saw a few cloudy vapers and maybe 5 or 6 beer drinkers, but that’s it.  The kids were all high on the music. Isn’t that sweet?  I did catch a whiff of weed once at the very beginning of the show.  The other mom and I looked at each other there in the back of the pit and smirked a little, knowingly. 

It's more about the band members and song lyrics and less about the music and the beat. Zoe worships the Panic! band members and she knows every word to every song.  I was not in love with Angus Young or Steve Perry****, and by no means could I even understand every word they sang.  It was more about the beat and the music and the way it made you feel, and the dancing. 

One thing was definitely the same:  The lead singer wore leather pants. 

There were 3 bands in the line-up:  “Swimming With Bears” which I have never heard of and probably no one got to see because it took over an hour to get into the Concrete Street Amphitheater, was up first, then Panic! and finally “Weezer.”  We left before Weezer was supposed to come on stage precisely, I assumed, at 9:35 pm, as advertised. Supposedly though, they and the crowd were a little more older and rowdier. It poured rain about halfway through, “so that made it even more awesome,” my nephew texted me the next day. 

I typed most of this blog post into my smartphone while Panic! performed a couple songs from albums Zoe doesn't have, therefore I'd never heard. All in all, I think I made very good use of my time, and Zoe was over the moon thrilled. While I had a great time at most of the concerts I went to in my younger days, like most parents, I want my kids to do as I say, not necessarily as I did.  Panic! at the Disco was enjoyable enough for all of us. 

Zoe happy and sweaty at the end of Panic's set

______________________________________________________

*Lyrics from Victorious, a Panic! song with a video that is way crazier than the concert was
**Just call me "Mr. Belvedere," if you're as old as I am, or "Jesse," if you watch the Disney channel.    
***So happy I got to see Don Henley before he passed away. 

****AC/DC and Journey 

Deadly Force

Last night was the final class in my FBI Citizen's Academy. It was an action packed evening with bomb techs, gadget makers, funny money, lock picking, infrared cameras, the gun vault and simulated scenes of when to use or not use deadly force. I gained a whole new perspective on the use of deadly force.

This helpful USA Today pic is exactly what it looked like for us

We sat in a dark room in front of a huge screen where several life-size demonstations of take-downs and shoot-outs played out right in front of us. During the first scenario the volunteer academy participant was very cautious and would have been killed. By the 4th scenario we had shot and killed a 14 year old mentally handicapped boy. It was so nerve wracking that we would have shot anything at that point. I'm not really into guns. The prior weekend I was a no-show for the popular Range Day during which everyone gets to shoot. I have zero desire to shoot a gun*. So I didn't volunteer for the simulation either, but I had a front row seat for each demo. It was like a video game (which I also have very little experience with), but your imagination generates enough adrenaline and anxiety for you to get a tiny idea of what it must be like in real life. And you judge less. 

I couldn't help thinking about all the media reports about deadly force. Who are they to judge? They're behind a desk or a microphone, not in front of a gun, or a perp. I feel certain that my thought processes will be very different the next time I hear about a law enforcement incident involving deadly force. 

I really enjoyed the FBI Citizen's Academy. It was put on by a great group of people. Next week is the graduation dinner at the Plaza Club where I won't be banned from real time social media activity so look out!

If anyone is interested in being nominated to participate in a future class, let me know. Or visit this link. 

*My dad was a US Marshall so make no mistake, I have had ample opportunity to shoot a gun. 

Against All Odds

Amachi is a Nigerian word that loosely translated means "Who knows what God has brought us through this child." The Amachi Texas Mentoring program through Big Brothers Big Sisters has been providing life changing volunteer mentors for some of the most at risk kids for over 10 years: children of incarcerated parents. These kids are 7 times more likely to become incarcerated just because they are born into dysfunctional family cycles of incarceration. Imagine if your dad and grandfather and brother and uncle have all been in jail. It's only natural for you to follow in their footsteps and join the family business. We only know what we see.

I was inspired to write this post because of some great outcome news for the Big Brothers Big Sisters of South Texas Amachi kids:  In the last school year 98% progressed to the next grade level!  Now this is something to joyfully rant about! We are very proud of these kids and excited to add this outcome to many others:

• In 2015, the US Department of Labor reported that only 5% of previously incarcerated youth served now by Big Brothers Big Sisters had re-offended (6% recidivism rate  in Bexar County).   
• In 2010 after 4 years, 100% of youth in Bexar County with Big Brothers and Big Sisters, identified as at-risk of engaging in juvenile delinquency due to common risk factors, remained incident free according to the Texas Department of Family & Protective Services. 

In 2011 I wrote about how funding for Amachi was at risk and ultimately cut by 50% by the state; that same year the federal Mentoring Children of Prisoners program was also cut by 100%.  Despite these losses, Big Brothers Big Sisters has continued to serve hundreds of Amachi kids every year, helping to Break the Chain.  Unfortunately there are twice as many children on the waiting list, unserved as a result of the cuts. We will be going back to legislators in this next session year in the hopes of restoring the lost Amachi funding. 

Amachi was started by Reverend Wilson Goode in Philadelphia after he visited a prison and met a grandfather, a son and a grandson in the same prison.   The grandson told Reverend Goode that he had a son on the outside who he had never met but fully expected to meet there, in the prison. The reverend was inspired to reach out to the faith community and recruited the first 500 Amachi volunteers that started a movement.


For more info oin how to help, visit www.bigmentor.org or call 210-225-6322.  

Gangs: The Dysfunctional Club

The FBI Session on Gangs was such a downer. It became very clear to me that gang membership is just a sad quest to find a sense of belonging. These young men band together for comfort and protection and adopt similar types of clothing, tattoos, signs and symbols, and create artistic, poetic club names like these:

• Brown Leaf Posse
• Where Chaos Begins
• Hoover Crips
• Ganster Disciples
• Latin Kings
• La Nuestra Familia
• Cosa Nostra
• Hell's Angels
• Blood Stixx

Yes, there is an edge to it all - they created this for protection.  They just want to be a part of something - like we all do. They feel stronger together, like we all do.  I am quite well aware of how destructive and dysfunctional it all is, but I still felt so sorry that they feel the need to create something like this because a natural, healthy, functional, constructive path is so obviously missing in their lives. 

There are 1-1.5 million gang members in the US, 100,000 in Texas.  There are about 70 gangs in San Antonio with 8-9,000 members.  16% of incarcerated gang members in Texas come from Bexar County.  In order to qualify for the federal or state definition of a "gang" there must be 3-5 individuals who share an identifying sign or symbol and regularly engage in criminal activities.  Their major source of income is the distribution of narcotics.  There are 3 major types of gangs:

• Neighborhood (88%)
• Prison (9.5%)
• Outlaw Motorcycle (2.5%)

The major threat in Texas is the Mexican Mafia (La Eme), which pretty much controls the drug trade,  and was founded and is centered in San Antonio.  Like most gangs, they are very structured; governed by a Constitution and ruled by a chain of military-like command of generals, captains, lieutenants, sergeants and soldiers.  They levy a 10% tax on all sales of narcotics called "the Dime Collection," which means that if you were thinking about getting into the business, you will start out owing the Mexican mafia 10% of whatever you make.  For this, they will "protect" you.  If you don't pay, you will be "green-lit" (marked for death). 
Other than some newer gangs (with poetic Tango names) the commitment for membership is for life and known colloquially as "Blood-in/Blood-out" which means to get in you have to kill someone and you can only get out by being killed.  I asked two questions at the end of this session and both answers were damn depressing:

1.  How young do they recruit?  Answer: "Younger every year and currently as young as 16."  
2.  If a young man wants to get out, how can he?  Answer: "He can't.  Prevention is the key." 

Well, of course it is. 

Tattoos incorporate local symbols like the Alamo, the Spurs and area codes

Baggy pants originated from not being able to wear belts in prison

Hand signs

Rad more about the origins of gangs here.  It is fascinating. 

The "Family Engagement" Struggle

I remember my parents having to go to my school only twice when I was a kid. Both times were in high school. The first time was when I got suspended for typing up a colorful* description of my teacher during typing class. The second when my mom came to watch me get a journalism award. That's it. The rest of time they were completely absent from school grounds. Today they would be considered disengaged parents, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Because they were engaged where they needed to be: in the home; in my out of school environment. They signed me up for Girl Scouts and let me join a youth group at church. They made me do my homework. They supported my teachers by teaching me to respect authority. I was nearly a straight A student. 

Since my own school days I've supported 3 academically successful daughters, 14 years apart, from preschool to college. Over that time I've been a witness to a baffling ever-evolving somewhat frantic and ultimately futile barrage of "family engagement" efforts. Efforts to get parents into the schools to somehow make up for the fact that they aren't doing their jobs outside the school. A job that ideally would start much sooner and that is so much bigger than attending PTA meetings or understanding college career pathways. Efforts that I felt increasing pressure to respond to. But why? 

I've written before about the contract that the American education system made with parents over 200 years ago being  irrevocably broken by a vast majority of our youth caregivers. My family was poor.   My parents worked a lot. My dad was working and trying to go to college.  My 4 siblings and I were on free and reduced lunch. None of this prevented my parents from understanding and fulfilling their responsibility to make sure I attended school ready to learn.  The difference was that my parents had had parents who understood and accepted the contract. Too many of today's parents did not and even fewer of tomorrow's parents will have. It's a domino effect. Because who teaches parenting? 

In 1994 I worked in the University Hospital Social Work Department in Lubbock, Texas with teen moms aged 12-17. A 12 year old who wouldn't or couldn't tell anyone how she got pregnant. A 17 year old having her 4th baby. Too many 15 and 16 year olds to count. Some had daddies in the picture and some did not. Some had daddies you wished were not in the picture. Most of the girls were only in the hospital for delivery for a very short period of time. I wasn't allowed to talk to them about birth control. Only their physician could do that. I never saw one who did. 

Every one of those girls left the hospital completely unprepared for motherhood**. If I could track them all down now, over 20 years later, I'd bet they have all struggled. I bet there were many CPS cases. I bet their kids were developmentally behind and educationally challenged. I bet the percent of their kids that showed up for school ready to learn was small. 

It's very predictable. We know what the problem is**, and even what we need to do, but we don't have a clue how to do it. We need to teach everyone how to parent, but we don't know how to reach them. Hence placing the "family engagement" burden on schools. And parents today need hard core teaching: not only the how to change a diaper kind of parenting, but the grow your child's brain type of parenting, and the set clear boundaries and expectations kind of parenting. And it's not just economically disadvantaged parents or any particular ethnic group that need to learn these skills. That elephant in the room is a big part of the problem. 

Parenting is hard. It's unfair for us to expect the knowledge to appear by osmosis. Most families don't have a village. Times have changed.  I despair that we won't do anything. Or at least we won't do anything new, or actually innovative, or early enough or to scale. We will continue the blame game.** We'll beat the family-engagement-in-school-program dead horse. We will expect schools to be capable of filling and/or replacing the parental role. We'll do a few parenting classes here and there for lower income parents or those identified as at risk of abuse by entities like Child Protective  Services.

We will continue to do too little and be too late. 

*Profane 

**Stay tuned for a future post on how we love to blame parents for failings we knew they'd have, quickly followed by crucifying their children for being so fucked up. Excuse my profanity. I learned it early on.  Also, all those girls left the hospital with a car seat, by God, because the state of Texas had decreed it. Regardless of whether or not they actually even had a car, they got a free car seat. 

Give Big, Give Wisely: Give to Big Brothers Big Sisters!

Just Do It

If you already know all about  

The Big Give SA 

and  

Big Brothers Big Sisters

just go to  

The Big Give SA website 

and donate now. 

But if you need to know who to give to, read on friends.

Why you should give to Big Brothers Big Sisters on May 3rd: 

1. It's what kids need: Studies show that  kids need positive, individual attention from adults in order to thrive and grow, but there's less and less of that going around these days than ever before. When kids get a Big Brother or Big Sister they get a friend and advocate all to themselves. 

2. It's unique: There aren't many community based mentoring programs out there.  Big Brothers Big Sisters of South Texas provides youth with a unique one to one, face to face, regular on-going and consistent mentoring relationship that lasts anywhere from 9 months to a lifetime. 

3. It leverages volunteers in a Big way: There are nearly 3,000 volunteers every year who make time in their lives to spend time on our youth. When you give to Big Brothers Big Sisters you are thanking every one of them for their service. 

4. It works: Kids with a Big Brother or Big Sister are more likely to avoid negative behaviors like truancy, violence, crime, sex, or drugs, and more likely to engage in positive behaviors such as staying in school, delaying gratification and planning for the future than youth without a "Big."

5. The demand for Big Brothers Big Sisters services is overwhelming: There are over 1,000 kids waiting everyday! Help us help them! 

It's the Big Give on May 3rd all day long, but we hope you'll help us  
win a Power Hour Prize: 

• Noon to 1 pm
• 6 - 7 pm. 

Last year we more than doubled what we raised in year one! Help us reach our $20k Big Give 2016 goal by clicking here to visit The Big Give website. Just $10 is all we ask, and tell your friends to do the same. 

These very cute kids in the video below would like to thank you in advance for your Big Give donation to BBBS!