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Can mentors help primary school children with behaviour problems?
| This document is published for archival/historical purposes. It will not be updated. |
Final Report of the three-year evaluation of Project CHANCE carried out by the Thomas Coram Research Unit between March 1997 and 2000
This report provides a summary of the evaluation of project CHANCE, which was set up in 1996 and is a community-based intervention programme designed to prevent potential long-term antisocial behaviour, social exclusion and criminal offending. The report’s aims are to outline the evaluation’s findings and identify the resulting lessons for other mentor projects and evaluations in this area. |
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Title: Can mentors help primary school children with behaviour problems?
Author: Ian St James-Roberts, PhD and Clifford Samlal Singh, Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London
Series: Home Office Research Study 233
Number of pages: 60
Date published: November 2001
The project provides trained mentors who work on a one-to-one basis with primary school children who have shown some behavioural problems. The goal is to intervene early, to support and steer the children away from more serious and long-term problems.
Some of the main findings of the report were
The use of mentors to support primary school-aged children with behaviour problems is innovative and the programme has plausible, evidence-based approaches. The first goal is to establish a trusting relationship. The mentor then builds on this to deliver a solution-focused intervention, designed to increase the child’s competencies and resiliency.
The children, their parents and the mentors all report improvements in the children after the mentoring period. The main gains reported are in the development of confidence, self-control and social awareness and relationships.
This finding may indicate that mentoring cannot achieve significant generalised behavioural change in such children within a year, implying a need for additional supports. It is equally possible that it indicates the need to further develop the solution-focused stage of mentoring.
The project's goals were achieved and financial support ensured, but the additional commitments over-extended the project. Fewer children than planned completed the mentor programme, with the result that it proved substantially more expensive than budgeted for. Numbers are currently returning to target levels.
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Last update: Thursday, August 28, 2008