Mentoring fatherless boys

Mentoring fatherless boys

“Very few serious youth offenders come from stable, two-parent homes. On the other hand, not every solo parent breeds a criminal. Nor am I making judgments about separation. What I’m saying is that most serious young offenders lack a positive male role model.”

Big Buddy Mentoring Trust

Mentoring fatherless boys

Sometimes being a hero just means being there

- NZ Chief Youth Court Judge, Andrew Becroft

Big Buddy an Outline 2012 page 2

Mentoring boys is a profoundly simple concept but one that has huge implications in healing the social fabric of our communities. Our dream is that every fatherless boy in New Zealand who needs a positive male role model will have one and in the process, we will build a better world.

Executive Summary

The Big Buddy mentoring programme is based on the simple philosophy that boys need good male role models in their lives to become well rounded men. Unfortunately, many boys do not have a father or other male role model and while their mothers do courageous work in raising their boys alone, they cannot model maleness. And above all else, boys learn through modelling. While there are many exceptions, in general terms a boy without a male role model to assist his development is inherently at risk. There is compelling evidence showing fatherless boys are heavily overrepresented in criminal statistics and the costs to the country are significant (see page 12 for details).

Big Buddy was founded in 1997 to address this issue by matching male volunteers to fatherless boys as life-long mentors. Since then, we have developed a leading edge approach to recruiting men and have built a rigorous screening process that all volunteers go through before they are accepted as mentors.

The Big Buddy mentor does nothing more than spend 2 to 3 hours a week with a boy (Little Buddy, aged 7-14) for at least a year, although most established mentors say it’s for life. They spend quality time together, doing ordinary things like fishing, walking on the beach, fixing cars or simply hanging out together. The content of the outings is not important - just showing up regularly and being there is probably the most important gift a Big Buddy gives. The idea is simple yet profound in its reach. It involves a good man showing up every week into a boy’s life, assuring him another man cares for him and giving him a reference point of what it means to be a good man. No coaching, no psychological behaviour management, no blaming of parents. Just knowing there is a man he can trust to show up will increase the boy’s self-worth and improve his relationships. He will likely do better at school and he will be less inclined to crime and abuse.

In a world increasingly overwhelmed by social problems, men often ask what one man can do to help. At Big Buddy we witness the outstanding results of one man simply taking one boy out - once a week. It’s profound. One man can’t save the world … but he can make a world of difference to one boy’s life. It’s that simple.

Big Buddy Brian and Little Buddy Liam working out

The Big Buddy Programme

The core work of Big Buddy falls into four areas:

1. Recruitment and screening of male mentors

We have developed leading edge methods to both successfully recruit men from the community (no easy task!) and screen them to ensure they are indeed men of good character. Our screening process is in-depth and nuanced but briefly, it builds up a 360 degree view of our volunteers through the perceptions of at least 8 different people – professionals to family members. We have now matched 450 boys, with absolutely no abuse issues of any kind.

2. Interviewing/assessment of fatherless boys and their

caregivers

We take similar care in interviewing caregivers and their boys. Building a picture of the boy’s background and personality while especially determining what happened to his father; our policy is clear - we do not replace fathers. We also gauge how the boy will respond to a mentoring relationship – most will but some won’t.

3. Matching mentors with boys Matching a boy to a mentor is done with intuitive care. We negotiate the match between mentor, caregiver and boy and test this in an initial meeting of all concerned. It’s an art well-honed, over years of work.

4. Support The growing relationship is supported (coached) for the first 12 months. In all cases, no matter the length of the match - mentor, caregiver and boy will feel part of the Big Buddy community and can seek advice and support from us at any time.

The above is accomplished by our coordinators working in specific areas, going out to the homes of caregivers and mentors. The coordinators get additional support from our Psychological Assessors contracted for individual assessments on each mentor.

The case work for each coordinator is intensive. Getting to know people very well and very quickly draws on skills from counselling to social work. Each coordinator builds up a direct network of mentors, mothers and boys he knows personally. The initial work is resource intensive but our vision is each match will last a lifetime, so we consider our initial investment of time is well worth it. Our current model gives us a capacity of 80 matches per year. The head office role is funding, financial management, promotion, training and on-going programme development.

The scope and extent of our programme therefore is governed, in the main, by the numbers of coordinators we can fund, train and place in the field.

From the Big Buddy files — Tim’s Story …

This six-year-old suffered greatly at the hands of his father and mother, both violent P addicts now in prison. He is raised by his Grandmother, who struggles. Tim’s background may have caused his autistic tendencies; cowering whenever a man entered the room, his Grandmother reporting he cried on Christmas and birthdays because no father comes for him. On first meeting his Big Buddy he ran to him, grabbed his leg and said “Are you for me? - a profoundly moving moment for the Big Buddy. After months of outings with his Big Buddy he is a very happy boy, sings and whistles at home. “I have never heard him do that before” said his Grandmother. His Big Buddy discovered he loves mechanical things and now collects old toasters, clocks etc for Tim to dismantle on the weekend. His Big Buddy is continually astounded at the small, simple things that make him the happy boy he is today.

Mentoring as a social programme

Mentoring in its broadest sense has been around for a very long time. The basic idea of one person taking an abiding and caring, empathic interest in the life of another is perhaps a core foundation of our humanity. Over our history it has taken many forms; often with names other than mentoring. In recent years it has gained increasing popularity in business and organisational development.

Mentoring young people in the context of a national social programme started in the US and Canada in 1940 with the establishment of the Big Brothers programme. Currently mentoring in the US is very diverse, delivered by thousands of organisations with heavy government support.

In New Zealand, mentoring has been growing since 1997, either as dedicated mentoring programmes or as an adjunct to other youth programmes.

Mentoring can have many forms, so we think it important to distinguish between two distinct modes of mentoring:

• Goal orientated mentoring (or coaching).

• Relational mentoring

Goal orientated mentoring is generally short term (max 12 months), with specific end goals in mind, usually behavioural shifts or achievements. It tends to be formal in approach and requires extensive training of the mentors. It is easier to evaluate precisely because of its goal focus.

Relational mentoring is generally longer term (min 12 months), often leading to lifelong relationships. Its only goal is to establish a real relationship, similar in depth to a family one. The benefits are profound but broader in scope and therefore more difficult to evaluate. Mentors need less training but screening at the recruitment stage is more crucial, as is on-going support to help build what starts as an artificial relationship into a real one that can last a lifetime.

The Big Buddy approach

Our mentoring mode is relational; the ideal we set for each new mentor is a life-time relationship. The minimal training and on-going support primarily focus on how to build trusting relationships. We restrict entry into the programme to boys aged 7–14 because this age group is most conducive to creating what are initially artificial relationships. A further criteria is working exclusively with fatherless boys. This group’s social needs for a same gender ‘parent’ figure are strong, supported by significant evidence showing boys with supportive male role models grow into ‘good’ men.

The known social effects of fatherlessness are:

‘Hard’ impacts Petty crime - moving to serious crime Drug abuse - moving from ‘soft’ to ‘hard’ drugs Violence

Note: All of the above will involve at the very least: Police, Justice system, social workers and prisons. And of course, the cost to community of the crimes themselves

‘Soft’ Impacts Inadequacies in relationships with women Lower achievements in education Loss of direction Bad life choices Unfulfilled potential

Later struggles with parenting

“Har

Mentoring generally: The social impact

The social benefit of mentoring youth has been well documented overseas. A key study, much quoted, is the evaluation by Public/Private Ventures (P/PV), an independent social research agency, of the Big Brothers Big Sisters (BB-BS) mentoring programme in the US. Other studies are available but in brief, most studies note that if the mentoring relationship is carefully founded and well-supported for the first year, the relationships ‘stick’ and yield many benefits to the child or youth, their caregivers, the mentors and the community at large. The social costs of not supporting at risk youth have also been well documented in the US (see page 12).

The Social Need

New Zealand 2006 Census statistics show there are some 52,500 boys aged 7- 14 living in single parent households. We conservatively estimate that of that number, approx. 8000 will be truly fatherless – that is to say, they will have very little or no on-going contact with an adult male (see Appendix B page).

Mentoring Fatherless Boys: The social impact

It is well accepted that as each boy grows into adulthood, the quality engagement with the world is to a large degree governed by the quality of his childhood development. While there are many stories of people overcoming the limitations of their upbringing to become fine adults contributing well to our communities, our premise is that on closer inspection you will find resilience factors in their background, often in the form of an adult taking a caring and abiding interest in the young person’s future. In many cases, it took only a small amount of real interest from another person to have a large impact on a boy’s future. For many, it was a sports coach, teacher or boss. In our case, it is the influence of a committed mentor.

But what if these boys were left to grow up into men as best they could - what impact would that have on the community? We offer some leading thoughts in the box (left). The ‘softer’ impacts, while more difficult to put numbers on are no less significant. The second-to-last - unfulfilled potential - is perhaps the saddest. What is the impact on our world of children growing up to be less than they can be? What do we lose as a society; what could our world have been like had these young men reached their potential? What would their contribution have been?

While this human impact is crucial to consider, we can also indicate a very real financial cost to our communities of not fathering boys well. Taking two factors from the Big Brother/Big Sister evaluation: Children with mentor relationships were: 46% less likely to initiate drug use 33% less likely to hit someone Both significant reductions in behaviours with serious criminal potential!

From the Big Buddy case files

(* Names changed to protect individual privacy)

Tama was 12 when we matched him with his Big Buddy, John, back in 1998.

Before the match, we found out his father was serving time in Paremoremo maximum security prison. He was a senior gang member and Tama a ‘prospect’, due to join the gang. Our Big Buddy met with Tama’s father in prison to ensure the way was clear and the father told John he did not want his son following in his footsteps; that it was too late for him but could John please keep Tama well away from the gang culture. He gave John his blessing to ‘father’ Tama into a different life.

Tama and John are still buddies. Tama is now in his twenties and has finished his training to become a chef. Though they don’t see each other every week as they used to, they still keep in contact and John continues to help him with major life decisions. Tama’s father is now out of prison and at last report, is still very happy his son made the life change he could not. He still expresses his gratitude to John for looking after his boy.

Everyone involved in this case are absolutely clear on one thing; without a Big Buddy mentor Tama would be a career criminal, working in the gang culture right now.

The monetary value of the social impact

Let us make a very, very conservative estimate that for every 100 boys we help, 2 of them may have gone down the route leading to a serious criminal action, like heavy drug use. Page 12 shows the monetary cost of a longer term criminal is US $4.2 to $7.2 million. In NZ Treasury estimates, the cost of crime is $3 million per criminal. So by saving those 2 boys, we save the country $6 million.

Put another way, if just one of the 80 boys we help each year is diverted from a life of serious crime, we have already ‘paid’ for the cost of many years of the Big Buddy programme. No matter how heavily you discount these figures, the monetary case is compelling.

To give a very concrete illustration of how this can work we have an example from our own case files (see box on left).

Considering this, it is not surprising the first funding to found the Big Buddy programme in 1997 came from the Crime Prevention office of the Prime Minister.

Most people working at the coal face of crime will attest to the fact that prevention needs to start early and the earlier it starts the less costly it is. Unfortunately, the political environment with 3-year election cycles is not always the ideal one to take on this longer term view of crime prevention. We have faith however, that those with long-term commitments to community funding will be able to take the bigger view.

Our experience since 1997 has been that fatherless boys matched with mentors develop into well-rounded individuals, capable of reaching their potential. Their confidence and sense of self-worth improved with mentoring. We have also noticed in the older boys a change in their sense of community; they are less self-centred, and more open to finding their place in the community and willing to be of service.

While it is difficult to state precisely what would have happened with these boys if they remained fatherless and were not mentored, the evidence is clear that un-fathered boys are potentially at risk. While many may well develop into healthy social adults, many will not and it is these boys who are overly represented in many social statistics. There is an indication on page 12 highlighting a few of the social statistics on the effects of fatherlessness.

Buddies Scott and Robbie with the mark 1 go-cart they built together. Mark 2 got turbo charged!

Match numbers and Cost per Match

Since 1997 Big Buddy has created 463 matches and we are current actively supporting 211 matches. Many older matches no longer need our support.

We have 60 men coming through the screening process and 123 boys on our waiting list. At the current capacity and assuming full promotion Big Buddy can create 80 new matches per year at a current cost of $7500 per match .

ends

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