Abstract: Mentor programs have become a popular approach to increasing reading level's, improving school performance and improving quality of life for children and adolescents in a variety of settings. At their best, mentor programs are a strength-based service designed to identify supportive responses to the struggles and challenges that face our youth at school, at home and in the community. Model mentor programs help to link children and adolescents to appropriate and beneficial services in the community. If mentoring is effective across age groups and populations, it should be highly effective for parenting teens, but there are unique problems. Unlike most other groups of children and adolescents, mentoring for parenting teens is complicated by the fact that the teens themselves are parents with childcare responsibilities. The need for effective mentoring programs for parenting teens has never been more critical in light of recent Welfare Reforms that put greater responsibility on the teen to prepare for a future that includes work.
This poster will describe the barriers to implementing an effective mentor program for parenting teens. It will also identify strategies to address the barriers to increase the likelihood that the mentor experience will have a positive influence on the appropriate and needed use of services. It will cover the issues related to both the mentors and the parenting teen. Mentor issues focus on recruitment, training, matching and retaining mentors. Parenting teen issues are the pressures of school, work and childcare responsibilities and the approaches designed to overcome them.
Learning Objectives: Learning Objectives: At the end of this session, participants should be able to: 1) understand the barriers to implementing mentoring programs; 2) identify strategies to address these barriers; and 3) develop approaches to enhance the effectiveness mentoring programs
Keywords: Teen Pregnancy Prevention, Service Delivery
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.