The Juvenile Mentoring Program (JUMP), supported by OJJDP, is a key component of OJJDP’s Comprehensive Strategy and the Juvenile Justice Action Plan. Mentoring has the potential to reduce risk factors that make children vulnerable to delinquency, school failure, and dropping out. At the same time, a mentoring relationship has the potential to serve as a protective factor which buffers youth from the many risks they must navigate as they grow to adulthood. Mentoring can be introduced into a child’s life early as a primary prevention intervention, or later as a mitigating or remediating intervention. Mentoring can operate in support of a wide variety of goals such as improved school performance and attendance, abstinence from drug and alcohol use, reduction in gang involvement, and avoidance of delinquent activities. The JUMP program, first authorized by Congress in FY 1992, and first funded with combined FY 1994 and FY 1995 funds, has, through grants to local education agencies (LEA’s) and community-based organizations, provided interventions to thousands of youth since its inception. At the time this report was being prepared, over 3,000 youth, from Cohorts I and II, were enrolled and actively involved in a JUMP mentoring project.

Literature in the fields of prevention and resilience indicate that a mentoring-type relationship can and does have a positive impact on the healthy development of youth at risk.

There is considerable literature in the fields of prevention and resilience to indicate that a mentoring-type relationship can and does have a positive impact on the healthy development of youth at risk. The JUMP program grants allow local organizations to establish mentoring activities designed to meet their own local needs and serve youth at greatest risk in their communities. With OJJDP’s leadership, lessons learned from the operating JUMP projects and from the national evaluations can provide a greater understanding of what it is that makes mentoring work, key factors that are critical to the success of a mentoring relationship, project models that show promise, and effective approaches to community collaborations.

In the current fiscal year, OJJDP supported a one year continuation of the original 41 JUMP grant projects. This was done in order to enhance the evaluation of these projects. Each Cohort I project received supplemental funds in an amount which, when combined with its unexpended fund balance at the end of year three, would allow the project to complete a fourth year of project activity. Together with the second group of 52 continuing Cohort II grantees, OJJDP currently is funding 93 JUMP projects. It is anticipated that 23 to 26 new projects will be funded this year.

The two national evaluation efforts—SafeFutures and JUMP—will continue. The SafeFutures evaluation will continue to address the program implementation process and to measure performance outcomes across the sites. The evaluation activities are based on a logic model that links project activities and outputs to desired intermediate and long-term outcomes. Utilization, duration, and intensity of mentoring services are among the variables being tracked by the SafeFutures evaluation. On-site monitoring and interviews with key stakeholders, service providers, and youth will help OJJDP determine whether a comprehensive strategy involving community and program resources to provide a continuum of care has succeeded in preventing and reducing juvenile violence and delinquency.

The initial JUMP evaluation activities focused on documenting JUMP project implementation and on gathering descriptive information about youth, mentors, matches, and mentoring project models. This information, much of which has been presented in this report, provides the foundation for the next phase of evaluation activities.

The second phase of the JUMP evaluation will measure changes in youth behavior and attitudes that may be attributable to their participation in a mentoring relationship. The evaluation will examine the relationship between those changes and a variety of factors including youth risk factors, project model and activities, and mentor recruitment and training strategies. It is expected that these factors will impact the duration and success of each mentoring relationship, and ultimately youth outcomes (Exhibit 7:1). The outcome model takes into account the extent and severity of risk with which each youth enters a JUMP project, making it possible to more accurately assess the effectiveness of mentoring in influencing positive behavior changes.

Analysis of youth progress and outcomes in relation to project models of service delivery will allow us to identify specific project characteristics that are most closely linked with positive outcomes. Because the JUMP program allows each grantee to design and implement, within the JUMP guidelines, a unique service delivery model to best meet the needs of youth in each community, the evaluation will be able to examine a wide range of project approaches. It is anticipated that there will be a link between approaches to project implementation, successful mentoring relationships, and positive change in youth behaviors. Exhibit 7:2 summarizes youth, project, match, and outcome variables the JUMP evaluation will examine.

OJJDP intends that the JUMP evaluation will accomplish three main objectives:

1. documentation of the overall effectiveness of the JUMP program in modifying youth behaviors that reasonably can be expected to impact achievement of the long-term goals of reducing juvenile delinquency and gang participation, improving academic performance, and reducing the dropout rate;

2. provision of specific feedback and assistance to the JUMP projects regarding their own effectiveness; and

3. identification of specific programmatic practices that show greatest promise for successfully reaching positive youth and community outcomes.

Martin By fifth grade, Martin was well on his way to becoming another statistic in Wicomico County. This rural Maryland county has a high rate of juvenile justice intake cases involving assault, theft and runaways. Martin never knew his father and his mother died, leaving him in the care of his grandmother and uncle. Upon entering his new school, Martin presented himself as the stereotypical angry young man: belligerent, defiant, uncaring, unkempt, and a bully. Then he was matched with a mentor. In the two years following that match, Martin has begun to wash his own clothes and care about his personal appearance. He takes responsibility for his actions and no longer gets into fights. He has made new friends. At a recent Parent/Student/Mentor Team Meeting, Martin drew a poster about "What Having a Mentor Means to Me." This picture of a huge red heart, with welcoming arms, sturdy legs, and a big open smile so perfectly captured the essence of our program that the advisory board has selected it as our official logo. - Wicomico Mentoring Program

To maximize the opportunity for success of the JUMP grantees, OJJDP also is supporting training and technical assistance (T&TA) for JUMP project staff. This T&TA will occur in a variety of ways including phone and on-site individualized assistance, provision of documents to guide project operations, distribution of a JUMP Self-Evaluation Manual, an on-line network to support information exchanges among peer grantees, and attendance at national conferences and symposiums.

In keeping with OJJDP’s desire to address special needs of specific populations, several JUMP mentoring projects will continue to be funded in order to focus efforts on female juvenile offenders and at-risk girls, American Indian and Alaskan Native communities, and minorities who historically have been disproportionately represented in the juvenile justice system.

In FY 1998 Congress appropriated one million dollars to support Big Brothers/Big Sisters (BB/BS) capacity building activities. Based on a history of leadership in the mentoring field, BB/BS will use these funds to increase the knowledge and capability of community-based organizations to implement and operate mentoring projects. BB/BS has made a commitment to develop new approaches to recruitment and management of volunteers, foster new programmatic initiatives, and generate community support to expand the capacity of BB/BS affiliates. OJJDP will share the findings and lessons learned by BB/BS with other bureaus within the Office of Justice Programs (OJP), the Mentoring Alliance, the Mentoring Policy Council, other Federal agencies, and the mentoring field.

OJJDP coordination of efforts between Federal departments and agencies allows easy exchange of information and lessons learned across program areas. The Department of Justice (DOJ) works closely, for example, with the Departments of Health and Human Services, Education, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, and other Coordinating Council members, to coordinate community-based efforts that share the common goal of delinquency, gang, or violence prevention. In addition, DOJ staff participate on the Interagency Council on Mentoring which is working to identify existing mentoring projects, investigate research issues, and explore opportunities for further collaboration. All information that is gathered through each of the mentoring or other related projects will be disseminated widely through a variety of media and resources including the OJJDP Juvenile Justice Clearinghouse and the National Training and Technical Assistance Center.

By Martin - Wicomico County

As we learn more about mentoring and effective mentoring practices that lead to measurable positive outcomes for youth at risk, OJJDP will have taken significant steps forward in the effort to reduce delinquency, juvenile violence, participation by juveniles in gangs, school failure, and drop-out rates. Moreover, we will have provided communities with a proven tool to be used to sustain that progress in the years to come.

Previous	Contents	Next
1998 Report to Congress: Juvenile Mentoring Program		OJJDP Report December 1998