The Case for In-School Monitoring.

Anecdotal reports and academic literature have documented the positive impact of a caring adult on a child’s life. Developmental psychologists generally agree that all children need an adult in their lives who is crazy about them. Resiliency research has found that children who were able to cope despite difficult circumstances identified a single factor as most helpful: one significant adult in their lives, who showed and maintained a real interest in and connection with them. In family circumstances where the child does not have that one consistent, interested adult – whether that is due to death, divorce, imprisonment, or parents working many jobs – the resiliency and outcomes are not as positive. But, mentors can fill the gap. Informal mentors are adults – such as sports coaches, teachers, relatives or neighbours – who already have a place in a child’s life. Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) have formalized the mentor process to strategically provide mentors for children and youth who do not have such a significant, caring adult in their lives. In BBBS programs, mentors are adults who are unrelated to the child and who commit time to spend with the child each week, for at least a year. Independent research has demonstrated the positive impact of mentoring on the lives of children in areas such as academics, attitude, anti-social behaviour, decisionmaking, and relationships with peers, parents and other adults. The need for mentoring has never been so great. The Progress of Canada’s Children report states that the number of children under 12 years old whose parents were separated or divorced has tripled in the last 20 years; that children in sole-parent families are at greater risk of poor development than other children if the family is very poor or lives in an unsafe neighbourhood; and that the number of poor children grew from 1.36 million in 1995 to 1.5 million in 1996. Yet, for a variety of reasons (family responsibility, increased mobility, work commitments, etc.), the number of people who are willing or able to make the commitment to a community-based match is dropping. So, while we know that mentoring works, it has become more difficult to make the match that makes such a difference in a child’s life. In response to these two trends – increasing numbers of children who are in need coupled with a decreasing pool of volunteers – Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada has launched a national In-School Mentoring program that allows local agencies to provide many more mentors to children. ISM is an activity-based program where the mentor and mentee meet on school property, during school hours, for one hour each week. Employers generally support the volunteer mentors in their volunteer work by releasing them from work for the volunteer time. Volunteer mentors are recruited, screened and trained by the agency; however, the children are selected by the teachers. Children who have low self-esteem, who may be at risk of dropping out of school, or who need extra attention may be identified as most likely to benefit from a one-to-one relationship. Often these children live in single-parent families and are highly transient, moving from home to home and school to school. Because children do better if they are matched at a younger age and when the match lasts for a longer period of time, some schools target children in grades 2 to 4. Typically, older children and youth tend to be more peer-focused and are somewhat reluctant to be involved in the ISM program; group mentoring programs seem to be more effective with that age group.