Posted by eporter on June 23, 2023
Mentoring Central Shares Effective Practices for Mentoring Programs Serving Children of Incarcerated Caregivers
June 23, 2023, Durham, NC – Mentoring Central President and Senior Research Scientist Dr. Janis Kupersmidt presented as a panelist in a live session at the 2023 National Institute of Justice (NIJ) National Research Conference last month in Arlington, Virginia.
The annual NIJ Research Conference provided attendees with opportunities to learn and share recent research findings in the fields of youth mentoring, law enforcement officer wellness, school safety, forensics, technology evaluation, and more. The theme of this year’s conference was “Evidence to Action,” and attendees delved into topics and strategies to engage in more inclusive research processes to promote safety, equity, and justice.
Kupersmidt presented on a panel entitled Promoting Evidence-Based Youth Mentoring: The Benefits of Researcher-Practitioner Collaborations with a team of decorated, experienced youth mentoring experts, including presenters, Principal Researcher at the American Institutes for Research (AIR) Roger Jarjoura, National Director of Reach & Rise at the YMCA of San Francisco, and Jennifer Kriebl, and discussants, Youth Advisory Council Member at the National Mentoring Resource Center Kamal Amirneni, and Senior Director of Research and Quality at MENTOR Michael Garringer.
Kupersmidt shared the results of a randomized controlled trial evaluation of enhanced mentoring practices implemented by mentoring programs serving children of incarcerated parents (MCOIP). Results from this study were recently published in the Journal of Community Psychology. She conducted the study with Mentoring Central colleagues, Dr. Rebecca Stelter and Dr. Katie Stump, and with Dr. Jean Rhodes from the University of Massachusetts Boston. Kupersmidt presented the results alongside her practice partner, Katy White, Director of Program Integration & Enhancement at Youth Collaboratory. Youth Collaboratory designed the program enhancements and provided training and support to the mentoring programs participating in the MCOIP project. White has over a decade of experience identifying strong elements of youth serving programs and replicating those elements to serve youth nationwide.
Kupersmidt and White engaged youth mentoring researchers, practitioners, and advocates with implications of the study’s findings and effective practices to implement in mentoring programs serving children of incarcerated caregivers. They detailed the benefits associated with consistent use of a conceptual framework that is not simply problem focused, as well as the effectiveness of using a strengths-based and positive youth development approach to mentoring. In addition, they outlined how extensive changes to the service delivery system of youth mentoring programs are challenging, take time, and require resources to implement. Finally, Kupersmidt suggested that maintaining the positive impacts of an enhanced mentoring intervention may require providing ongoing resources and support in the postintervention environment.