Researchers from the School of Social Work’s Social Development Research Group were awarded a five-year $2.5 million grant from NIH’s National Institute of Child Health Development to complete a randomized-controlled trial of a mentoring model established by Friends of the Children, an organization that pairs full-time salaried professional mentors with youth at risk.
The NICHD grant will support the completion of the project’s second phase—the longest-running, youth-mentoring trial in the country. A randomized-controlled trial is considered the gold standard in research.
In 2017, a research team led by J. Mark Eddy, former research director with the School’s Partners for Our Children, showed statistically significant differences between children who were paired with a Friends of the Children mentor and those who were not. The researchers found that those with a Friend were more likely to behave positively in school and complete tasks on time, use anger-management skills, and demonstrate a sense of belonging to the family. They were also less likely to get suspended or expelled from school. Parents also rated their children’s behavior more positively—an important protective factor for youth development.
“To date, the study findings have suggested that the Friends of the Children model is quite promising,” says Kevin P. Haggerty, one of the study’s principal investigators. “While the outcomes mid-way through the program have been similar to volunteer mentoring programs, many of those programs only last about a year, whereas this program commits to provide mentoring to a child for more than 12 years.” Haggerty is the School’s endowed professor of prevention and the director of the Social Development Research Group.
The second phase of the trial, to be completed in 2025, will examine the impact of the Friends of the Children’s model on youth when they finish the program, at age 19 and again at age 21. Research shows that childhood anti-social behavior is an early predictor of adolescent drug and alcohol abuse as well as other risky behaviors such as academic failure, juvenile delinquency, early sexual behavior and dropping out of school. The study will evaluate whether the program’s long-term outcomes—graduating from high school, staying out of the juvenile justice system, and avoiding teen pregnancy—were achieved.
“When Friends of the Children was founded in 1993, we were committed to building a program that was data-informed and based in sound research,” says Terri Sorensen, CEO, Friends of the Children. “We also wanted third-party investigation from a randomized-controlled trial to explore how children’s lives are impacted by having a long-term, consistent, caring adult presence. We could not be more thrilled that our dedicated researchers will now complete the 12-year study.”
The youth mentoring study began in 2007 when 281 five- and six-year-olds were recruited from four Friends of the Children chapters in New York, Seattle, Boston and Portland, Oregon. After an intensive child selection process, half of the children were enrolled in the program and have been followed as part of the study. In addition to funding from the National Institutes of Health, the study also received funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, Silver Family Foundation, and numerous other regional and local funders and philanthropists.
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Researchers receive $2.5 million NIH grant to complete randomized controlled trial on Friends of the Children’s mentoring model — Friends of the Children