Making Mentoring More Effective / Young Minds, September 2006

PDF - http://www.youngminds.org.uk/sos/ym-sos-mentoring.pdf
"Evidence is emerging about the potential for harm in the type of mentoring scheme that places an adult volunteer with a young person who is deemed to be at risk. A Joseph Rowntree Foundation evaluation of the ‘Mentoring Plus’ scheme (a scheme which combines a mentoring approach with an element of training and employment support) found that the expected benefits of such mentoring schemes are not materialising. A meta-analysis of a number of American mentoring programmes found that the benefits of such schemes to date did not match the unqualified support that mentoring schemes have attracted over recent years. There is a potential danger in seeing mentoring as a cheap intervention (and consequently not expecting too much from it)."