06: Mentor Screening and Enrollment

Standard of Practice: Programs should implement a mentor screening and enrollment process that determines all mentors are both safe and suitable for the program experience prior to being formally accepted and placed in a mentoring role.

Download Element 6
Download Checklist

Practices Supporting this Standard

The program has written policies and procedures for assessing the safety and suitability of prospective mentors, and for accepting or not accepting them into the program.

It is important that programs think holistically about youth safety — an emphasis on criminal history, while important, can obscure other serious issues related to the mentor’s suitability. Mentor screening practices should also assess prospective mentors’ motivations, harmful beliefs, or discriminatory behaviors that could negatively impact the young people they work with.

The program provides prospective mentors with a formal application that is completed as part of the enrollment process.

This written (or online) application should gather information about the prospective mentor that will aid in assessing their safety to work with young people and help programs make strong relationships between mentors and youth by building on common interests, backgrounds, and other relevant factors.  

The program conducts an in-person or online face-to-face interview with prospective mentors using a standardized protocol.

An interview with a prospective mentor is an excellent way to learn more about their motivations to mentor, personality, attitudes about youth, lived experiences and background, and other information that can help determine how well they might provide the mentoring experience youth are hoping to receive.  

The program conducts a criminal history records check, as well as checks of other records that may be relevant for identifying safety concerns and determining the eligibility of a mentor.

Ideally, criminal history checks would include a national-level FBI fingerprint check, although the availability of this method varies greatly from state to state. At a minimum, programs should consider running state-level checks in all places where a prospective mentor has lived in the last 10 years, although access to states’ records also varies considerably, as does the cost associated with this service. The program should share their approach and standards related to criminal history checks with potential mentors, including if any criminal history would disqualify mentors and why.Programs should consider the youth they serve in determining the most important safety standards such as severity, type, recency, and frequency of any offense.

The program conducts reference checks with at least two references provided by the prospective mentor using a standardized protocol.

These, ideally, will include both personal and professional references who can speak to the behavior, values, temperament, and skills of the potential mentor.

Prospective mentors formally commit to participating in the program and commit to following program expectations and rules upon their acceptance into the program.

As with youth participants, the screening and enrollment process should end with mentors providing their written consent to participate in the program, including adhering to expectations around their engagement with youth and following all program policies.

The program re-screens mentors periodically to ensure ongoing safety and suitability. Programs may consider reengaging mentors in some subset of these practices on an ongoing basis, especially if they are serving youth in the program for many years (e.g., reexamining criminal history every three years).

Because there is tremendous diversity in how and where mentoring is delivered to young people, here we offer additional practices and recommendations related to this Element for some common mentoring contexts. Readers should note that there may be overlap in the following categories (e.g., a peer mentoring program in a school or a Boys & Girls Club offering a group mentoring program on-site) and read all that may be relevant to their work.

GROUP MENTORING MODELS

Group mentoring programs will need to carefully consider the criteria that would make a prospective mentor a good fit for the mentoring experience offered, including prior experience working with youth (especially in groups), training or skills in group facilitation, and strong social and collaboration skills. If groups will be led by one mentor, it is also vital that the program considers potential scheduling conflicts that may interfere with their attendance.

PEER MENTORING MODELS

Peer mentoring programs will have additional considerations for determining that peer mentors are safe and suitable for the program. Criteria for consideration include:

  • Peer mentors’ opinions about the behaviors and attitudes of other young people in their community (negative views of their peers may be linked with lower-quality matches; Karcher et al., 2010).
  • Their comfort in building rapport and having conversations with a younger peer.
  • Their motivations and incentives for serving (e.g., getting school credit for participation has been linked with shorter matches; Herrera et al., 2008).
  • Scheduling conflicts or other obligations that might present a barrier to their participation.
  • The risk for negative role modeling or inappropriate behaviors.
  • Their comfort in seeking support from program staff as needed.

Youth serving as mentors may not understand the importance of consistency in their participation, so it may be especially important to use the enrollment period to highlight its importance and clarify whether the student has conflicts with class schedules or other school-related activities that would hinder their participation in the program.

Given that peer mentors who are minors will not have known criminal histories (these records are sealed for minors), it may be important for the program to rely more on references from adults who know the young person (e.g., their caregivers, teachers, other school staff or administrators, coaches).

E-MENTORING MODELS

E-mentoring programs should use the screening process to assess mentors’ access to, and comfort with, technology, particularly in communicating well with young people via the technology used by the program. The program should also review prospective mentors’ public social media accounts, as these spaces may become relevant as the mentor and youth interact online. Reviewing these sites can give insight into how the applicant communicates online and the appropriateness of their online presence in the context of working with young people.

E-mentoring programs will also likely need to conduct screening interviews using virtual meeting technology. This not only provides insight into the applicant’s digital literacy and communication style, but also the home environment or background that would be visible to the youth if they are meeting using similar technology.

SCHOOL- AND OTHER FORMAL SITE-BASED MODELS

School- and site-based mentoring programs working with volunteers are almost always operating in organizations with established policies and procedures regarding other types of volunteers (e.g., classroom aides, tutors, coaches). Mentoring providers will need to ensure that they comply with any existing policies or eligibility criteria that may limit who can serve as a mentor on site, especially when using volunteer mentors. Additionally, programs in these settings may need to prioritize criteria such as a volunteer mentor’s schedule compatibility or whether they have specific skills or backgrounds relevant to the goals of the program or the needs of youth.

Paid staff mentors in other site-based programs should be assessed for their skills and “fit” to serve in the mentoring role. For existing staff adding or transitioning into a mentoring role, organizations should avoid implementing redundant screening steps (e.g., conducting a second criminal history check on an already-hired employee), but may wish to emphasize other steps, such as:

  • Using an interview to determine the staff member’s motivation for wanting to mentor, how they will balance the mentoring role with other job responsibilities, the skills they may bring to this role (e.g., facilitating curriculum-based activities, working with groups), and their fit for the goals of the mentoring programming (e.g., comfort working with the targeted age of mentees).
  • Checking with new or additional references that can speak to the staff members’ disposition and ability to serve in a mentoring role.

INFORMAL MENTORING MODELS

Youth development organizations that offer informal mentoring via their staff may ask similar questions in an interview as those noted above for formal site-based programs. Additional reference checks relevant to the mentoring role may also be warranted.

  • How will we assess our prospective mentors’ ability to offer the mentoring experience we hope for our young people? What skills, personality traits, and experiences would enable them to do the kind of mentoring we require? How can our theory of change help us outline these characteristics? What kinds of role-play scenarios or other opportunities can we provide to demonstrate their ability to do this work well? How else might we gather this information as they move through our enrollment process?
  • How are we ensuring that our staff members are treating all applicants with respect and appreciation? Where might we have biases? How can we honor the desire to get involved even from people we do not accept? Can they contribute to our work in other ways? Where else might we refer them for other opportunities to give back in the community?
  • How can our current mentors help us improve our screening process? Do we know how they experienced this stage of their entry into our program?
  • How can we assess prospective mentors’ safety for working with young people? What kinds of criminal history checks are available to us? What other types of checks would be relevant for our work? What kinds of criteria would we consider disqualifying? How can our values inform those guidelines and decisions?
  • How do we define “safe” mentoring experiences? Does that definition include instances where a mentor (or staff) may treat a child or their family in a way that could inflict emotional harm? How can we improve our assessment of applicants to include this critical aspect of safety?
  • What questions should we ask mentors during their interview? What should we ask their references? And how do we weigh that information with other things learned in our enrollment process?
  • What is our process for making a final determination to accept or reject an applicant. Who makes the final call? And how do we handle those rejections with confidentiality and respect for the applicant?
  • How long does it take for a mentor to get through our enrollment and screening process? Are there efficiencies we can bring to this process without sacrificing thoroughness or validity?
  • Youth and caregivers can help refine mentor eligibility criteria by clarifying the types of individuals they are hoping are accepted as mentors and the types of characteristics and histories they would find to be either beneficial or disqualifying for a prospective mentor. Diverse perspectives are critical when gathering this information.
  • Programs may wish to involve youth or caregivers in interviewing prospective mentors or calling references to give their perspectives on a mentor’s “fit” with the program (this should only be done in situations where they are helping determine the fit of a mentor who will not be their own).

Programs may want to set benchmarks and track progress around metrics such as:

  • The percentages of mentor applicants that are accepted, not accepted, or quit the enrollment process (with analysis of the demographic composition of each group and the reasons for disengagement or not being accepted).
  • The average length of time it takes for prospective mentors to go from application to formal acceptance into the program (benchmarks may vary, but more than a few months may lead to disengagement of many mentors).
  • The percentage of applicants that complete all screening steps/procedures.
  • The percentage of all screening procedures that staff implement as intended.

Background Checks. MENTOR.
This webpage offers an overview on the importance of these checks in a mentor screening process and several downloadable tips sheets on conducting background checks.

Mentor Screening – Fostering Progress. Silver Lining Mentoring.
This webinar reviews the key components of the Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring, fourth edition, Screening Standard and explains how to use scenarios in the interview stage to assess how a candidate would approach the mentoring role.

Promoting Screening Practices for Safety and Suitability of Mentors. National Mentoring Resource Center.
This webinar discusses best practices in mentor screening.

Risk Management and Youth Safety Components for Mentoring and Youth-Serving Programs. MENTOR, National Mentoring Resource Center. This brief discusses risk management for mentoring programs including screening of both mentors and mentees