Posted by eporter on February 21, 2025
Mentoring Central to Evaluate the Impact of Training Mentors on Youth Impacted by Substance Misuse
Mentoring Central is excited to announce that it has received funding from the National Institutes of Health to evaluate the impact of a web-based training program on mentors working with mentees who have been impacted by substance misuse.
Approximately 14.7% of youth 12 to 17 years old reported using illicit drugs in 2023, and more than 21 million children in the U.S. lived with a parent who misused substances between 2015 and 2019.1,2 Thus, youth can be impacted by substance misuse in more than one way – they may be at risk for misusing substances themselves; they may be in treatment or recovery for substance misuse; or they may live with a caregiver who is misusing one or more substances.
Being involved in a mentoring relationship may be beneficial to youth who have been impacted by substance misuse. However, to optimally achieve positive outcomes, these youth need to be matched with a mentor who has received high-quality training in how to support a mentee who has been impacted in some way by substance misuse.
Mentoring Central created a web-based, interactive training program called Substance of Change: Building Assets in Mentees Affected by Substance Misuse (SOC) to prepare mentors to support substance-impacted mentees, so their mentees can experience a strong, long-lasting mentoring relationship that helps them achieve positive growth. SOC builds upon foundational, basic mentor training by helping mentors learn about the typical pathways to addiction, how to help their mentees cope with stress to avoid substance use, and how to help their mentee build their assets, so they can thrive. In addition, the program includes several optional lessons on strategies to support a mentee who is close to someone misusing substances or a mentee who is in treatment or recovery from substance use. The lessons include many real-world examples, problem-solving scenarios, and knowledge-check quizzes to promote retention of information from the training.
As part of the new Federal award, Mentoring Central plans to conduct a research study to examine the effectiveness of the program on mentors’s knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors.
To learn more about the web-based SOC training for use with your mentors, visit https://mentoringcentral.net/mentoring-training/substance-of-change-building-assets-in-mentees-affected-by-substance-misuse/.
If you are interested in having your mentoring program participate in the research evaluation, email Mentoring Central at mentoringcentral@irtinc.us.