Supervision

A quality mentoring program puts much time and effort into recruiting, screening, training and matching a new program participant. But the work is not done once a match is made. The program is now responsible to help the match develop and grow in positive directions for as long as it is part of the program.

To match or to supervise?

It is easy for your mentoring program, in its desire to provide mentoring relationships for as many young people as possible, to be drawn into focusing on matching new recruits to the neglect of supervising existing matches. Making new matches tends to be the exciting, "glamorous" part of the work of mentoring programs … supervision can sometimes seem mundane and routine.

But match supervision is absolutely essential to the success of the program. Remember, it usually takes a lot more resources to create new matches than to keep existing ones. And one match gone bad can create a negative public image for the whole program, resulting in a lot of difficulty recruiting for new matches. Thus, it is necessary to balance your program's pursuit of new matches with an emphasis on servicing existing matches.

Making a case for supervision

Research done on a variety of mentoring programs (Johnson, 1998; VanPatten, 1997; LoSciuto et al., 1996; Mecartney et al., 1994; Sipe, 1996) has consistently shown the importance of supervision. Successful matches (defined as those in which matches meet regularly and in which participants are satisfied with their relationships) are much more likely in mentoring programs that have professional staff providing regular supervision to volunteers, than in those programs that do not provide mentors with regular supervision from professional staff. Mentoring is not always easy, and providing assistance through the rough times can make the difference between a successful match and a disappointing or damaging one.

To explore how match supervision is done, have a look at The Stuff of Supervision.

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