Boston (September, 2021) MentorHub NU is being rolled out to all NU students. Navigating university life can be challenging and when challenges arise students need personalized just-in-time and proactive support that is efficient, effective, and trusted. Based on the science of “supportive accountability,” MentorHub NU streamlines the support process and connects you with the support you need when you need it.
McQuillin, Hagler, Werntz, & Rhodes (2021). Paraprofessional Youth Mentoring: A Framework for Integrating Youth Mentoring with Helping Institutions and Professions. American Journal of Community Psychology.
Highlights
From Abstract
Abstract The demand for child mental health services, including those provided by psychologists, counselors, and social workers, exceeds the supply. This trend is expected to continue or worsen unless there are substantial structural changes in how mental health services are provided. We propose a framework for paraprofessional youth mentors, defined as a subgroup of professionally supervised, non- expert volunteer or paid mentors to whom aspects of professional helping tasks are delegated. Our proposal is aligned with historical and modern solutions to scaling mental health services, and this framework could simultaneously increase the number of youth receiving evidence-based mental health services and reduce the burden on existing systems of care. The framework defines three plausible tasks for paraprofessional mentors: (1) reducing barriers to mental health service, (2) increasing engagement in services, and (3) providing direct services. The safety and effectiveness of these task-shifting efforts will hinge on competency-based training and evaluation, supervision by professionals, and documentation of services rendered, all of which the field of youth mentoring currently lacks. We describe several requisite scientific, institutional, and regulatory advances that will be necessary to realize this
✉ Jean E. Rhodes jean.rhodes@umb.edu
variant of youth mentoring for a subgroup of youth who are presenting for assistance with mental health problems.
Harvard Gazette: When COVID robbed children of their friendships, learning suffered
After the pandemic closed schools last year, hospitals saw a surge in mental health-related emergency visits among children 18 and under. The statistics have been grim enough that a large cohort of the nation’s top pediatricians recently declared a “national emergency” in child and adolescent mental health.
COVID disrupted connections for everyone, but especially children. Cut off from social networks — sometimes even the internet — young people had few opportunities to forge relationships outside the home, said Jenlei Li, the host of a Harvard Graduate School of Education webinar called “The Healing Power of Friendships and Relationships.” Stuck at home, they lost chances to connect with peers, teachers, coaches, and guidance counselors.
With schools back to a semblance of normal, Traci Baxley and Jean Rhodes joined Li, the Saul Zaentz Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Education and co-chair of the Human Development and Education Program, to discuss how teachers and parents can encourage kids to rebuild these critical relationships, which are integral to both learning and mental health.
“Young people are suffering,” said Rhodes, a professor of psychology and director of the Center for Evidence-Based Mentoring at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. In her research, Rhodes has found that strong relationships between children and caring adults can have positive effects for decades, extending through middle age. Many of those relationships are built at school.
But schools alone cannot solve mental health issues, she said. Most can only afford to employ one counselor to serve hundreds of children. “It’s a systemic problem,” she said. Rhodes advocates for “stocking the pond with caring adults,” including volunteer mentors and paraprofessionals, and teaching kids to fish. “Learning occurs in relationships,” she said.
Baxley, an associate professor at Florida Atlantic University and author of “Social Justice Parenting: How to Raise Compassionate, Anti-Racist, Justice-Minded Kids in an Unjust World,” witnessed firsthand how the pandemic isolation affected learning. Her five children include a teenage son with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, who struggled with virtual education.
“Now that he’s back in school,” she said, “he’s a different kid.”
Rhodes and Baxley stressed the educational component of their message — that learning happens through relationships with teachers. And teachers, said Baxley, have the power to create community — or not. Children must feel heard and seen; teachers can build democratic classrooms, talk through stressors, and develop plans to face them. Teaching children how to handle stress, talk about emotions, and develop relationships shouldn’t be an extra, Baxley said; it should be embedded in classroom culture.
Outside school, sports teams, after-school programs, and religious institutions provide critical opportunities for kids to learn social-emotional skills and build strong connections, said Rhodes.
“We need the village,” said Baxley, punctuating her argument by noting her work in Florida’s Palm Beach County schools: “Right now, they have over 800 students that are unaccounted for since the pandemic. They shouldn’t be lost, wherever they are.”
Community organizations can help keep children safe and engaged, especially now, when adults are also struggling with increased mental health issues. The pandemic, Baxley said, is a chance to “care more and to reset how we treat people around us, including other adults.”
At home, parents can model coping skills, said Baxley, like going for a walk or talking through difficult emotions. They should also provide space for children to articulate their feelings. “A lot of the time as parents, we need to stop knowing and start listening,” she said.
Baxley taught her son with ADHD to understand his needs — academic, dietary, and physical — as well as what he can control and whom he can ask for help. “You want your kids to be independent, but part of that independence is asking for the things you need.”
Marginalized children, Rhodes added, are often the least able and least likely to speak up for themselves. Their schools tend to have fewer adult mentors and counselors to serve each child. Helping these students make connections is an urgent matter.
“The more relationships we can put in the path of children, the better,” said Rhodes.
“Amen to that,” said Baxley
Julia Freeland Fisher
Last spring, I had the chance to speak with Jean Rhodes, a leading researcher in the world of mentoring, and author of the book Older and Wiser: New Ideas for Youth Mentoring in the 21st Century. For schools managing yet another year of pandemic upheavals, Rhodes’ findings offer a roadmap for broader, evidence-based thinking about relationship strategies that keep students connected and supported.
Deploying these approaches in schools, she argues, can also complement teacher-student relationships that are all too often taxed by punishing adult-to-student ratios. Rhodes’ notion of “supportive accountability” (described below) could be especially powerful as schools navigate the social and academic costs that everything from teacher shortages to interrupted schooling are exacting on students this year.
Here’s a few highlights from our conversation, which you can listen to below:
October 20, 2021
The pandemic has caused many of us to recognize the power of relationships — for ourselves, and for our children. Have your children’s friendships changed — or suffered? Are your students finding it hard to re-ignite their stalled connections? How can schools help to foster friendship — and prioritize strong relationships and a sense of belonging for every student? And what are the lessons we can take with us into our own adult lives?
Featuring: Junlei Li, Traci Baxley, Jean Rhodes
We have found in the pilot that Big Brothers and Big Sisters and Little Brothers and Little Sisters who who connecting through MentorHub are staying more connected to each other. It’s actually providing some depth to the relationship. Young people are getting more comfortable communicating through texting and MentorHub has allowed this very safe space for our Littles to open up about how they’re feeling and what they are experiencing. It gives just the right amount of distance, which really adds richness to the relationship with their mentor and helps their mentor and our staff better support the young person….MentorHub app helped big time…” (Listen to the Podcast)
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Mass wanted to continue adapting and serving. Earlier this year they partnered with Dr. Jean Rhodes, Director of the Center for Evidence-Based Mentoring at the University of Massachusetts Boston, to work on the MentorHub. MentorHub consists of an app and integrated web dashboard that helps mentors support and track students’ use of the world’s best and scientifically-proven educational and mental health programs. With accountability and a shared dashboard with a mentor, students can really identify and work on areas that are challenges.
A Big and Little in action. Courtesy of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Massachusetts
Getting kids to close apps like TikTok and instead sign into educational and wellness ones is easier said than done. But Jean Rhodes, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston, is on a mission to change that.
MentorHub is an app helping students stay connected to remote learning. Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Massachusetts teamed up with clinical psychologists to design technology that’s making the connection between mentors and mentees more personal. Jean Rhodes, professor of psychology at UMass Boston, and Omari Jahi Aarons, a mentor for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Massachusetts Mentor 2.0 Program, discuss the importance of the app.
MENTOR (the National Mentoring Partnership) promotes mentoring and offers resources like this, for “youth in the wake of trauma,” and currently a “Mentoring Amplifies” campaign. This Boston-based partnership includes an affiliation with UMass-Boston Professor Jean Rhodes, the Center for Evidence-based Mentoring, and the Chronicle of Evidence-Based Mentoring. Professor Rhodes is the author of Older and Wiser: New Ideas for Youth Mentoring in the 21st Century and Stand by Me: The Risks and Rewards of Mentoring Today’s Youth.
Read more at Meredith.edu
…”One of the organization’s programs, called REACH, supports homeless families. Pardue plans to start a research-based mentorship program for REACH that she will introduce to Meredith in the spring. “Partnering with a Boston-based non-profit called Mentorhub, the program is skill-focused and utilizes apps such as Khan Academy, Intellicare, SuperBetter, and Headspace,” she said. “The REACH homeless children and youth will be matched with a graduate or undergraduate student from a number of the colleges and universities in the area, including Meredith.”
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Massachusetts, a Boston-based nonprofit that provides adult mentors to help youth reach their full potential, noting that “mentoring is more important than ever” during the coronavirus pandemic, recently turned to technology to better support the mentor-mentee relationships they foster.
Since moving to virtual operations last year, Big Brothers Big Sisters has formed a new partnership with Meharry Medical College and expanded its programs. Read more
