Planning a mentorship initiative for foster parents: Does gender matter?
Introduction
Foster parents are tasked with caring for society’s most vulnerable children. In order to support foster parents in this endeavor, public (e.g., local and state governments) and private (e.g., private child welfare service providers) entities are looking for ways to support foster parents charged with caring for maltreated young people. One way this support has manifested itself is through the propagation of mentor initiatives that support both caregivers and the children in foster care (e.g., Cohen & Canan, 2006; Rhodes, Haight, & Briggs, 1999; Weinberger, 2014). Despite the acknowledgement that mentorship programs can support permanency and placement outcomes for children, the literature is devoid of research related to the use of mentoring for foster parents. Further, there is nominal research that examines differential planning processes for supporting foster parents through mentoring relationships. This paper seeks to uniquely address these limitations.
The purpose of this exploratory research was to examine foster parent (N = 59) perceptions related to conceptualizing a framework necessary to plan a foster parent mentor program. Additionally, this study examined priority differences in the conceptualization, by self-reported gender (i.e., foster mothers vs foster fathers). To achieve these aims, researchers employed a mixed method approach that analyzes qualitative data via quantitative device, specifically non-metric multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analyses. Through these analyses, illustrative visual depictions of participant data are computed. After a terse review of literature, this paper will outline methodological processes undertaken for this study, explicate results, and discuss lessons learned for future programmatic development and evaluation endeavors for mentorship programs.
Section snippets
Background
In general, mentorship programs are designed to support learning and development of skills (Breipohl & Hamburg, 2011) and seen as a way to improve quality and retention. Mentoring has been used in a variety of ways including helping youth transition to adolescence by pairing them with a nonparental adult (Spencer, 2007; Zimmerman, Bingenheimer, & Notaro, 2002) and supporting the career development of underrepresented minority groups in science and math through mentorship (San Miguel & Kim, 2015
Method
To answer the research questions posited above, researchers employed Concept Mapping (CM) methodology. CM is an iterative, participatory, mixed-method research methodology that pairs non-metric multidimensional scaling (MDS) with hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA). CM is a research approach process often utilized to delineate conceptual structures around a focused area of study (Anderson, Day, & Vandenburg, 2011). Several researchers (e.g., Burke et al., 2005, Haque and Rosas, 2010, Rosas, 2005
Participants
Fifty-nine participants took part in brainstorming and statement structuring activities for this study. All participants were foster parents residing in one southeastern state. The typical participant identified as female (n = 35), Caucasian/White (n = 54), African-American/Black (n = 3), or Biracial/Multiracial (n = 2), was aged 39.53 (SD = 10.37) years, and had been a foster parent for approximately 4.4 months (SD = 2.4 months). In terms of educational background (highest obtained), 17 participants
Discussion
The purposes of this study were two-fold. First, this study was to explicate a conceptual framework for planning and developing foster parent mentor programs. Second, this work examined priority differences, in terms of importance and feasibility, of this conceptualization, by gender. Both of these purposes contribute to addressing limitations in the current literature. The following paragraphs outline prominent discussion points congruent with answering the research questions posited above.
Conclusion
While mentoring is an effective way to support new members and promote skill development and retention, little is known in the literature about the role of mentoring with foster parents. This research study sought to explore how foster parents conceptualized mentorship as well as if there were differences in perceptions by gender. Foster parents of both identified genders were fairly consistent in prioritizing areas of conceptualization and feasibility which deviates somewhat from literature in
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