Mentoring Foster Kids
The Importance of Mentorship
Trauma for foster children doesn’t end with placement in foster care. There are new crises to experience that add to older ones. Children often change foster homes numerous times, and each time means new adults, a new school, new friends, new rules, new everything. And rarely the sense that this time would be the last. One of the consistencies that can be in place throughout the troubled life of a foster child is mentorship.
When working with a foster youth, a mentor needs to understand that a life of neglect and uncertainty make it hard to develop trust. Mentoring an older foster youth takes extra patience and extended knowledge to help the young person step out in the world with self-esteem, knowledge and confidence. Support provided by a caring and trained adult can help prepare for aging out, an all important life changing event.
Mentoring Foster Youth Statistics
From Mentoring Youth in Foster Care and the National Mentoring Partnership:
46% of mentored youth are less likely than their peers to start using illegal drugs
52% are less likely to skip school
59% of teenagers earn better grades
76% of young adults aspire to continue their education
95% found mentoring to be helpful; 51% found the experience to be very helpful
“The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves.”
Unbreaking the Mirror
If you’re a foster kid living in a group home or institution, you are wrapped up in the system. Everything we did or touched or thought about was driven by the foster care system. We saw it everywhere we turned. For me, it began on the first day with breakfast in the ancient stone Main Building with a huge roomful of loud scrappy kids, each with their own story to tell, each fearful and yet ready to fight at a moment’s notice. Trust was a long ways away, not something we even thought about. We were too busy trying to bear up from the past and avoid the hurt of today.
A good mentor can fix that. One broken piece at a time. Opportunities for constructing hope can come and go quickly. Mentoring needs to be in place as a rhythm in the life of a foster kid. Mentors are lifesavers. Ask me, I know.
— Susan DuMond, author of Another Place Called Home