Intensive Mentoring/CBI

INTENSIVE MENTORING / COMMUNITY BASED INTERVENTION

Mentoring programs for at-risk youth are growing at a rapid pace across the United States. Youth mentoring programs differ in their curricula but, most emphasize the relationship between a disadvantaged or troubled youngster and a caring adult.  The relationship generally involves spending quality time together and providing support and guidance, with the aim of helping the young person better negotiate life’s difficult decisions.   Collaboration between the mentor and the child’s parents or caretakers is viewed as a critical variable in maximizing the positive impact that intensive mentoring can have on a child and their family.

Research indicates that the single most important factor that fosters resiliency in high-risk children is a caring and consistent relationship with an adult.  CRCC provides each child in our intensive mentoring program with exactly such a relationship through a paid professional mentor who are typically master’s and doctoral level graduate students with flexible schedules.  Each mentor is carefully screened and thoroughly assessed in an effort to determine the best possible fit for each child.  CRCC reinforces the mentor’s work with on-going training and supervision by highly skilled mental health clinicians.  With their diversity, education, passion, and commitment, CRCC mentors are the heart of our program.

Because the mentors spend time in each child’s home, neighborhood, and community, they provide continuity in often unstable environments and serve as a link between the different facets of a child’s life.  Our other services, such as individual therapy and family therapy often supplement the work of our mentors.  We design unique experiences for each of our children so they can explore and develop their diverse talents and interests; to help them develop enhanced coping skills via in-the-moment verbal processing of problematic decision-making; as well as offering learning opportunities for the development of social, academic and life skills.  We nurture each child’s progress with an individualized plan based on his or her unique needs, abilities, gifts and strengths.