by Rebecca Taylor of The Register-Guard Staff
A Eugene-based research center has won a $2.9 million federal grant to evaluate whether early mentoring programs reduce the likelihood of academic failure, delinquency and early parenthood in at-risk children.
The National Institute of Child Health and Development, a federal agency that conducts and supports research on human development, announced the award to the nonprofit Oregon Social Learning Center on Friday.
J. Mark Eddy, a research scientist and psychologist at the center, will be the principal investigator for the study.
He and other scientists will spend the next five years examining Friends of the Children, a youth-mentoring program developed in Portland that now reaches more than 600 children and teens across the country.
Friends of the Children identifies students considered to be at high risk for delinquency and behavioral problems, high school dropout, early parenthood and academic failure. Beginning in kindergarten or first grade, the children are paired with full-time mentors who are paid, trained and supervised by the program. Mentors work with up to eight children at a time.
The program says it has seen promising success rates over the past 14 years.
Friends of the Children reported that of the 300 children who have participated in its Portland program, 96 percent regularly attend school, 99 percent have avoided early parenthood, 80 percent have earned a high school diploma or the equivalent, and 40 percent have gone on to some form of higher education. Only about 8 percent end up in the criminal justice system.
The new study will divide 256 kindergarten-age children into two groups – one paired with mentors and a control group without mentors.
Investigators will follow the children for three years and record their social, educational and developmental progress.
After three years, investigators will compare results for the two groups to determine the immediate impact Friends of the Children mentors have on the lives of at-risk children.
Portland entrepreneur Duncan Campbell founded Friends of the Children in 1993 with $1.5 million of his money. Inspired by his own troubled childhood, Campbell hoped to help at-risk kids in the northeast Portland neighborhood where he grew up. During the past 14 years, the organization has expanded across the country and has chapters in seven cities. It is supported by grants, private donations and foundation gifts.
The program aims to break cycles of poverty, abuse and violence so children have a better chance of becoming contributing members of society. Positive results from the new study could direct more money toward mentoring programs.
“This gives us an opportunity to examine scientifically the positive results we experience anecdotally on a daily basis,” said Orin Bolstad, a clinical psychologist and Friends of the Children board member. “If successful, the results of this landmark study will promote our model to a new level nationally, allowing us to serve many more at-risk children.”
Oregon Social Learning Center has an annual budget of $10.4 million, and 98 percent of its revenues come from competitive research grants awarded by various branches of the National Institutes of Health. The research group has more than 200 full and part-time staff members who work toward developing programs and interventions that promote healthy children and families.
Youth Mentoring Study
For more information about Friends of the Children, including success stories, visit www.friendsofthechildren.org. For more information about Oregon Social Learning Center, visit www.oslc.org.
Reprinted with permission. Copyright 2007, The Register Guard