A randomized controlled trial of Friends of the Children, a long-term professional mentoring program for adolescents at risk: impacts at post-test and 2 year follow-up - Abstract
This proposal seeks funding to examine the impact of a 12.5-year long, relationship-based, professional
mentoring program, Friends of the Children (FOTC) within the context of an existing multi-site randomized
controlled trial (RCT; FOTC versus control). The research trial (The Child Study) was funded by the NIH
through the NICHD from 2007-2013. The program has continued through a variety of external funders.
Professional mentors (called “Friends”) have continued working with the youth since the project began.
Mentors receive extensive training and apprenticeship, and then participate in ongoing supervision, working
with a typical caseload of 8 children during elementary school and 10-12 youth during middle and high school.
Across the course of the program, youth involved in the program have interacted both with their mentors and
with other youth-mentor pairs, becoming part of a community of children and adolescents and caring adults.
To the best of our knowledge, there are no published, rigorous outcome studies of a mentoring program
that has this combination of program elements. The study is built on the rigorous research program that began
during The Child Study (Eddy, et al. 2015, Eddy et al., 2017), which demonstrated the strong adoption and
implementation of the FOTC mentoring model. Further, 5 years after the program began, this study found
growth in parent’s report of the youth’s behavioral strengths, as measured by increased family involvement,
interpersonal strengths and school functioning; positive school behavior; and less externalizing problem
behavior in youth randomized to FOTC compared to controls. The proposed study will reengage participants in
both intervention and control conditions to conduct end-line (just after actual or estimated high school
graduation) and 2-year follow-up evaluations of program impact into young adulthood.
The study uses a rigorous RCT design that includes two assessments of all of the active participants in
The Child Study (N = 259), a sample of low income, ethnically diverse, at-risk, urban youth. Data will also be
collected from caregivers and school, arrest and court records will be collected at the end point.
Implementation data collected by FOTC will also be used in the analysis. Young adult surveys will be
conducted and arrest and court records collection at the 2-year follow-up (about age 21). Using intent-to-treat
analyses, this study will examine program impacts in 3 primary outcomes -- avoidance of involvement in
juvenile justice, graduation from high school or obtaining a GED, and delaying parenthood into young
adulthood, at the program end point and 2 years later. Further, we will explore whether hypothesized
mechanisms of increased social capital mediates the relationships between intervention and outcomes. Finally,
we will examine the relationship between various levels of program involvement in FOTC and program impact.
