Children and Youth in Care and Mentoring Program

Program Background:

The Children and Youth in Care and Mentoring Program was established in 2014, with the goal of increasing the number of children and youth in care with access to a mentor.

Purpose of the Children and Youth in Care and Mentoring Program:

To support organizations in developing and facilitating mentoring programs for youth with special considerations for working with children and youth in care;
To build the capacity of service delivery staff in mentoring programming for children and youth in care;
To help children and youth in care develop meaningful relationships in formal mentoring relationships; and
To increase the number of mentors for children and youth in care.

The three sites combined served 936 unique children and youth between July 2014 and March 2023, supporting them in forming healthy and enduring mentoring relationships with caring adults while receiving intervention services, throughout transitions and post care.

The three sites also participated in a Photovoice project with Dr. Melissa Tremblay, Associate Professor in the Educational Psychology Department, Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta. Photovoice, a visual methodology used in qualitative research, is a way of combining words and photos together to express and document the desires, needs and problems of a community in a visual way.

This project looked to build understandings of how youth in care and their formal mentors experience mentoring relationships, and to examine the feasibility and perceived impacts of engaging in participatory research processes (more specifically, photovoice) with children and youth in care and their mentors. The University of Alberta research team worked in partnership with the three sites (Edmonton, Red Deer, and Calgary) to engage mentors and mentees in photovoice training, capturing photos, collective interpretation of photos, knowledge mobilization in the form of public photo exhibits, and providing feedback on the photovoice process.

Please click here to see the PhotoVoice Book produced from this project

Program Timeline:

2023: Evaluation Report

The Youth in Care (YIC) Program serves youth 6 to 24 years old who have been involved with Children’s Services and may be living in alternate arrangements such as foster homes, group homes or kinship placements. This report encompasses outcomes and findings for the 2022-2023 year.

Download the Youth in Care Program Evaluation Report and Infographic

2022: Evaluation Report

The Youth in Care (YIC) Program serves youth 6 to 24 years old who have been involved with Children’s Services and may be living in alternate arrangements such as foster homes, group homes or kinship placements. This report encompasses outcomes and findings for the 2021-2022 year.

Download the Youth in Care Program Evaluation Report and Infographic

2021: Evaluation Report

The Youth in Care (YIC) program serves youth 6 to 24 years old who have been involved with Children’s Services and may be living in alternate arrangements such as foster homes, group homes or kinship placements. The program recently completed a collaborative evaluation which reported findings for youth served from April 2020 to March 2021.

Download the Youth in Care Program Evaluation Report and Infographic

2020: Final Evaluation Report

The Children and Youth in Care & Mentoring supported meaningful relationships between volunteer mentors and children and youth in the Child Intervention system. This evaluation report encompasses outcomes and findings for the 2017 – 2020 funding cycle.

Download: Final Evaluation Report

2019: Mentor and Mentee Survey

The Children & Youth in Care and Mentoring Project received grant funding from the province of Alberta to increase the number of children and youth in care having access to a mentor. The agencies participating in the project are Big Brothers Big Sisters of Calgary and Area, Red Deer Youth HQ, and Boys & Girls Clubs Big Brothers Big Sisters Edmonton and Area Society. As a component of the developmental evaluation, as led by AndersonDraper Consulting Inc., mentors and mentees completed online surveys about their experiences with the program. The surveys were administered annually over the last three years.

Mentor and Mentee Survey 2019

2019 Results with Executive Summary

2018: Children & Youth in Care and Mentoring Program Design

This document outlines the Children & Youth in Care and Mentoring Program Design, informed through an extensive literature review, stakeholder consultation, evaluation and evidence-informed practice. This work is relational, collaborative, and significant as mentoring relationships positively impact the lives of children and youth in care in Alberta.

DOWNLOAD

2016: Evaluation Survey Report and Logic Model

The evaluation helps to determine what aspects are working well and why, which are not and why, and offers a regular feedback loop with learning opportunities for pilot sites to make modifications when necessary, learn from each other, and help to guide implementation.

Children and Youth in Care and Mentoring Project Survey Report (2016)

2015: Evaluation Plan and Year 1 Report

The Children and Youth in Care and Mentoring Pilot Sites Evaluation is intended to help better understand mentoring children and youth in care, the initial achievements and contributions of the pilot sites, and strengthen this work, with the eventual aim of expanding to be provincial in nature.

View the Children and Youth in Care and Mentoring Pilot Sites Evaluation Plan (2015)

View the Children and Youth in Care and Mentoring Pilot Site Year 1 Evaluation

2015: Toolkit on Effective Mentoring for Youth Facing Barriers to Success

The Alberta Mentoring Partnership and the Ontario Mentoring Coalition collaborated with the support of Alberta Human Services and the Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services, to create a toolkit outlining strategies and practices for mentoring children and youth in care. The Toolkit on Effective Mentoring for Youth Facing Barriers to Success provides further information on developing, implementing, evaluating and sustaining mentoring initiatives for youth facing multiple barriers to success.

Download The Toolkit

2014: Pilot Program

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Calgary and Area, Youth HQ (Red Deer), and Boys & Girls Clubs Big Brothers Big Sisters of Edmonton and Area Society, collaborated to a pilot mentoring program developed for children and youth in care and to participate in a joint evaluation.

2014: Literature Review

The AMP Youth in Care and Mentoring Advisory Committee commissioned a literature review on mentoring youth in care in a Canadian context. Literature on programs that focus on mentoring youth in care were sought out, as opposed to programs that serve a range of youth including those in care.

Mentoring Youth in Care Literature Review (Updated 2018)