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Loading …Councils have been handed government-commissioned guidance on the evidence base for mentoring and befriending schemes for care-experienced children and those at risk of entering the care system.
The practice guide, covering programmes that help children and young people build trusting relationships with adults, to improve their wellbeing and other outcomes, highlighted “strong evidence” that schemes combining skills development with one-to-one mentoring can improve mental health outcomes for children in care.
The publication, from sector what works body Foundation, is the latest in a series of practice guides designed to help authorities deliver on the Department for Education’s Children’s Social Care National Framework by translating evidence into recommendations for services.
Four key outcomes for children in care in England
The national framework, which councils must follow “unless exceptional circumstances arise”, sets four overarching objectives for children’s social care in England:
- Children, young people and families stay together and get the help they need.
- Children and young people are supported by their family network.
- Children and young people are safe in and outside of their homes.
- Children in care and care leavers have stable, loving homes
Foundations said its latest practice guide related predominantly to outcome four, though was relevant to outcomes two and three.
Policy on befriending and mentoring
Providing mentoring and befriending support to children at risk of entering care is not a statutory requirement, but councils must appoint an independent visitor to befriend a looked-after child when they consider it is in the child’s interests, under section 23ZB of the Children Act 1989.
The last government provided £9m from 2023-25 for local authorities to test mentoring and befriending schemes for children in care and care leavers, under a programme that is now being evaluated.
Review of evidence base
Foundations’ practice guide was based on a systematic review of the effectiveness of mentoring and befriending schemes for at-risk and care-experienced children and young people, success factors and barriers, carried out by academics at Liverpool John Moores University.
The review team examined 58 studies covering 33 programmes, including 20 studies, of 10 programmes, that examined programme effectiveness, most of which were randomised controlled trials (RCT), which randomly allocate participants into a group that receives the intervention and a control.
Six of the 33 studies programmes were UK-based, but this did not include any of those whose effectiveness was assessed, most of which were from the USA.
In its practice guides, Foundations makes recommendations about particular interventions having a “strong”, “good” or “promising” evidence base, derived from the relevant systematic review.
‘Strong evidence’ for positive mental health outcomes
In this case, it concluded that there was strong evidence that programmes including skills development and one-to-one mentoring can improve general mental wellbeing and post-traumatic symptoms in children aged 9-11 in kinship, foster or residential care who have experienced significant harm.
This was based on two RCTs of the Fostering Healthy Futures for Preteens (FHF-PT) programme for children in care in the US, under which:
- Groups of eight to 10 children meet weekly with two facilitators, who could be psychologists or psychologically-trained social workers, for 30 weeks to help them process adverse childhood experiences, covering topics such as problem solving, emotion recognition, cultural identity and resisting peer pressure.
- A social worker mentor is paired with two children, whom they meet, separately, for two to four hours per week, to form positive relationships with them and supports them to access services and practise skills learned in the group sessions.
The two RCTs, which had low risk of bias and sufficiently big sample sizes, according to Foundations’ criteria, found that children in the intervention groups had significantly better mental health scores than those in the control groups at follow-up assessments after 10 months or a year.
However, more broadly, the systematic review found eight of the other nine studies that examined mental health and wellbeing showed mixed or no effects.
Reduced risk of offending
The practice guide also found there was “good evidence” of positive impact of evidence-based mentoring programmes in reducing offending and re-offending rates among children and young people involved, or at risk of involvement, in the youth justice system.
This was based on a separate RCT of FHF-PT, which found it was associated with significant reductions in charges for offences, and an RCT of another US scheme, the Adult Connections Team (ACT) programmes, which provides mentoring, social activities, job training and work experience. That study found that offending and arrest rates were significantly lower among the intervention group than the control group at follow-up.
However, the other three studies that looked at challenging behaviour reported mixed or no effects.
Mixed evidence of impact
The practice guide also said there was “promising evidence” that mentoring programmes could support family reunification, greater permanency, transitions from care for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities or severe mental health challenges, and employability.
Across these areas, the evidence unearthed by the systematic review was mixed, with two of three studies that reported reunification outcomes showing positive effects, as was the case with one of two studies reporting on permanency.
Five studies showed no clear benefits for placement stability and transition out of care, and there was no clear pattern of effects on academic or employment-related outcomes.
‘Need for more UK-based research’
Overall, the review said that “current evidence about what works is limited”, though reached “a tentative finding that mentoring and befriending programmes may be more effective when combined with skills training”.
But the report stressed that further research was needed to “understand how and which types of models operate best within a UK context”.
Alongside the effectiveness studies, the review also examined qualitative evidence of children and young people’s experiences of mentoring and befriending programmes.
‘Clear lessons for how services should be delivered’
It said this “provided clear lessons for implementation and service delivery, highlighting the need to be led by the children’s and young people’s needs, for mentor and befriender selection to be initiated by the young person, for time and constancy in the mentoring and befriending relationship, and for appropriate training for mentors”.
Children and young people found mentoring and befriending “a source of emotional support”, with participation increasing their confidence and providing new positive relationships, stability and resilience.
Based on these findings, Foundations set out a number of principles for councils in developing mentoring and befriending services, including:
- Giving children and young people autonomy and control over the form and purpose of their mentoring or befriending relationship, to facilitate engagement and boost their self-confidence.
- Carefully matching mentors and mentees, taking into consideration interests, experiences, such as care experience, and personal attributes, such as race or ethnicity, to foster more trusting and mutually meaningful relationships.
- Considering using volunteer mentors, on the grounds that children and young people value authentic bonds with their mentor, perceive volunteers as more independent from statutory services than paid staff and report that this enables them to be more open.
Mentoring support ‘currently inconsistent’
Following the launch of the practice guide, Foundations chief executive Jo Casebourne said: “Right now, mentoring and befriending support is inconsistent. We need to change that, using the evidence in this practice guide to make sure young people get the support they deserve.”
“We’re calling on local partners, funders and providers to use this evidence to put in place support that works, and to make sure every child who needs it can access it,” she added.
