In-Home Mentoring: Where the Rubber Meets the Road
By Jack Vaughan
While traditional models of behavioral healthcare rely on sending struggling young people away, there is a promising new method that is bringing state-of-the-art care to people’s front doors. Let’s take a deeper dive and explore some of the meaningful effects that in-home mentoring can have on struggling adolescents and young adults.
Why In-Home Mentoring Works
Real-time support in real life situations. This allows for young people and their mentors to address problems as they arise at home and develop positive coping mechanisms in the environment in which they are needed most.
Observation of at-home behaviors. Mentors can observe how teens actually behave in their native environment and reduce the capacity of a mentee to hide certain behaviors or be an unreliable narrator.
Comfort and familiarity. Meeting at home allows young people to feel more at ease and receptive to behavioral health interventions.
Experiential learning. Whether it’s polishing a resumé, doing the dishes, or finishing school work, mentees are able to learn from the tangible experiences curated by their mentor.
Family involvement. With parent permission, mentors can discuss challenges and strategies with parents and align on goals. This united front is more likely to produce positive behavior change.
Small Achievements Build Lasting Efficacy
When young people directly overcome challenges through their own efforts and abilities, they build a strong belief in their capacity to replicate future successes. This is what is referred to as performance experience, and is one of the most powerful sources of increasing self-efficacy. At YPM, a young person’s mentor strategically facilitates conversations and experiences that are designed to enhance self-efficacy. Specifically, mentors work side by side with their mentees to help them learn how to turn their larger goals into daily and weekly steps that they can act upon. As these small wins accumulate, mentees get the satisfaction of achieving regular milestones whilst growing their inner confidence and resilience.
The Power of Self-disclosure
Unlike therapists, mentors are at liberty to self-disclose their personal experiences and leverage them to the benefit of their mentees. By openly sharing their own winding journeys of turning setbacks into accomplishments, mentors build their mentees’ confidence in their own capacity to navigate challenges. Furthermore, watching a mentor respond to crises with skill and emotional intelligence models for youth that obstacles are temporary rather than permanent. Similarly, self-efficacy beliefs are improved only when we believe that we are similar to the person we are observing.
Navigating Sensitive Topics
Meeting in an at-risk teen’s home allows mentors to navigate sensitive topics in an open, non-judgmental way. Discussing issues like mental health challenges, strained family relationships, school struggles, or substance abuse can be uncomfortable. The private setting allows for candid conversations without fear or embarrassment.
Teens often find it difficult to open up, especially to authority figures. Building trust and demonstrating genuine care are key to creating psychological safety for teens to share authentically. When mentees see mentors as allies rather than adversaries, breakthroughs can occur. For teens who feel disconnected, discouraged, or depressed, having a youth mentor show up day after day or week after week demonstrates commitment and compassion.
Vicarious Experience & Role Modeling
More than anything, struggling youth need positive role models. Young people are highly impressionable and pick up on the habits of those they spend the most time with. Through daily meetings and regular check-ins, mentors are able to demonstrate positive behaviors that teens absorb both consciously and unconsciously.
Rather than telling teens what they “should” do, mentors lead by example. Setting healthy personal boundaries, listening with empathy and respect, and communicating directly and honestly.
Real Progress Over Time
In-home mentoring relationships unfold naturally and gradually. While there is no such thing as an overnight transformation, incremental positive changes can occur over the weeks and months. Once underway, these notable shifts gather momentum and help to build the confidence and motivation for teens to grow.
Eventually, mentees may reveal sources of stress, family difficulties, school issues, or other problems holding them back. Only by establishing mutual trust and respect in one-on-one settings can these deeper breakthroughs happen. Meeting teens where they are––literally––lays this necessary groundwork.
How In-Home Mentoring is Different
Instead of sterile offices or intimidating inpatient facilities, in-home mentoring happens in the homes and communities where young people need it most.
Bringing evidence-based mentoring into real-world environments allows for youth to apply new coping strategies and life skills to real-life situations. Residential treatment programs often isolate clients from reality and separate them from the struggles of daily life. While this separation is sometimes warranted, it doesn’t need to be a first step. When clients discharge from residential treatment, a return to life at home often triggers a relapse because no foundation has been reset at home.
In-home mentoring doesn’t wait for full-blown crises to emerge before surrounding youth with comprehensive care. Typically, families wait until a full-blown crisis occurs before seeking care for their struggling young adult, but it doesn’t have to be that way. The earlier that a family involves an in-home mentor, the sooner they can prevent the crisis from occurring in the first place. When struggling teens and young adults connect early with skilled mentors, they get equipped to handle life’s inevitable stressors before negative coping behaviors get worse.
Premiere Mentoring Done Right
At YPM, our mentors:
Foster adaptive coping strategies, emotional intelligence, and self-efficacy
Teach accountability and self-reliance
Model pro-social behavior and mature communication
Help youth express and regulate their emotions
Curate experiential learning and behavioral activation
Enhance self-esteem through affirmations and strength-based learning
Provide a safe space for youth to confront difficulty & discover their unique abilities
Improve their client’s understanding of their role in the family system
At YPM, our mentors act as positive role models, accountability partners, and trusted advocates who teach their mentees core life skills like emotional regulation, accountability, and self-reliance. Our mentors help their mentees identify their strengths, work through challenges, and activate their potential.
In addition to skill-building, our mentors help their mentees navigate the complexities of early adulthood, develop self-efficacy, and cultivate a sense of purpose and belonging.
At YPM, our team has over 100 years of combined experience successfully helping struggling adolescents, young adults and their families. We have helped hundreds of families, across four continents, overcome their difficulties and achieve enduring harmony.
Connect with us today to learn more about how our mentorship programs can help your family today.