Shared Experiences, Shared Futures: Advancing Youth Voice, Self-Advocacy, and Empowerment In Foster Care through Credible Messenger Peer Mentorship.

Background: Research suggests that young people entering foster care can benefit from support, guidance, and mentorship provided by a peer who has shared similar life experiences in care. EnlightenMENT is a first-of-its-kind credible messenger peer mentoring program for youth in foster care placements that was conceptualized, proposed, and co-designed by the NJ Department of Children and Families (NJ DCF) Youth Council—a group of young adult experts with lived experiences in NJ’s child welfare system. EnlightenMENT provides youth in foster care between the ages of 14 and 21 with peer support from trained, supervised, and professional near-peer mentors that have their own lived experiences in NJ’s child welfare system. Mentors help mentees to articulate and work toward their goals, interact with professionals, and initiate connections to resources on their own. As part of the EnlightenMENT program evaluation, focus group interviews with active mentees were conducted to learn about their experiences in and perspectives of the program.

Methods: Focus group interview guides were co-designed with the input of EnlightenMENT mentors and the NJ DCF Youth Council. Mentees were eligible to participate if they had participated in EnlightenMENT for at least three months. The groups were separated by age (14-16 years; 17-21 years) and conducted virtually to facilitate chat features and polls during the interviews. The interview guide assessed the following topics: 1) motivations for joining EnlightenMENT; 2) the quality of mentor-mentee relationship; 3) the impact of EnlightenMENT on professional and social support networks; 4) strengths of EnlightenMENT, and 5) areas for improvement. Thematic analysis was used to identify key themes and concepts from the data.

Results: Twelve EnlightenMENT mentees participated in the study. Each interview lasted 90 minutes. The average age of participants was 17 years. On average, mentees were enrolled in EnlightenMENT for 11 months. Key themes emerged from the interviews that revealed deep bonds between mentors and mentees, as reported by the mentees themselves. Most were motivated to enroll in EnlightenMENT by a desire to increase their social connections. Across age groups, mentees unanimously felt that they and their mentors had authentic mutual understanding based on their lived experiences in foster care, which distinguished mentors from other professionals in their networks. Mentees also described how, through mentorship, they positively reframed their perspectives of child welfare workers in their professional networks, improved the quality of their relationships with friends and families, increased their social networks, set and pursued goals, and learned to self-advocate for their needs without reluctance or fear. Lastly, several participants expressed wanting to meet with their mentors more frequently than the model requires, while others further suggested that young people’s length of stay in EnlightenMENT be extended.

Conclusions and implications: Youth entering foster care seek genuine connections with people who share similar lived experiences. The findings from this study demonstrate how, in EnlightenMENT participants’ words, credible messenger peer mentors support their social connectedness, goal achievements, and understanding and engagement with system network professionals. Increasing the frequency of sessions and extending the length of stay should be considered.