Implementing a professional youth mentoring program during times of crisis: Lessons from the global pandemic.
Hanson, K. G., Satchell, A. K., Skinner, M. L., & Eddy, J. M. (2026). Implementing a professional youth mentoring program during times of crisis: Lessons from the global pandemic. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 31(1), Article 2685864. https://doi.org/10.1080/02673843.2026.2685864
This study uses Friends of the Children (FOTC) to examine what happens when a highly structured, professional mentoring program is forced to operate through a prolonged crisis. The authors focus less on “does mentoring work?” and more on “how did mentors actually spend their time before, during, and after COVID-19, and what does that tell us about program resilience?”
Study design and sample
The study is an observational, longitudinal analysis nested within an earlier randomized controlled trial of FOTC. The original trial assigned eligible children either to receive FOTC professional mentoring or to a control group; this paper focuses only on the 156 youth in the intervention arm, of whom 112 were still enrolled in FOTC when the current observation period began in January 2016. Youth were drawn from four FOTC chapters in Portland, Seattle, New York City, and Boston and were originally recruited in early childhood because they showed signs of distress and faced multiple adversities, including high exposure to adverse childhood experiences and economic hardship.
At the start of this analysis, youth were about 13 years old on average, 58 percent identified as Black or African American, most were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, and they had been in FOTC for an average of six years. FOTC mentors are full-time, salaried staff with benefits who typically have relevant education or experience in youth development or related fields and carry caseloads of about 8 to 10 youth. The study follows these youth from early adolescence into late adolescence and early adulthood across three periods: pre-COVID (January 2016–February 2020), during COVID (March 2020–September 2022), and post-COVID (October 2022–December 2023).
What the researchers measured
The authors draw on detailed administrative data from FOTC’s centralized tracking system, where mentors and supervisors log their time and activities. They distinguish between:
Direct time: hours spent in direct contact with youth, either in person or remotely. This includes in-person outings and activities, virtual or written communication (phone, text, email, online platforms), school visits, home visits, and transportation of youth.
Indirect time: hours spent on activities related to youth but not in their presence. This includes contact with caregivers and other supportive adults, communication with school staff or teachers, research and planning activities for youth, transportation on behalf of youth, and mentor professional development.
The authors aggregate these data into monthly and bimonthly averages and use one-way ANOVAs with post-hoc comparisons to examine changes in total hours, distribution of direct versus indirect time, and the frequency of specific direct and indirect activities across the three periods. They do not analyze youth outcomes in this paper; the focus is on implementation
Key findings: Total time held steady, but how time was used changed
A central finding is that total time devoted to youth remained quite stable despite the pandemic. On average, mentors spent about 13 to 14 hours per month per youth across pre-, during-, and post-COVID periods, and differences in total hours were not statistically significant. What changed was the balance between direct and indirect time.
Before COVID-19, mentors averaged about 10.1 monthly direct hours and 3.7 indirect hours per youth, with direct hours exceeding indirect by roughly 6.4 hours. When stay-at-home orders began, direct hours dropped to about 7.3 per month, while indirect hours rose to about 5.6 per month, narrowing the gap and briefly reversing the pattern so that indirect hours approached or even exceeded direct contact. After restrictions eased, direct hours increased to about 8.4 per month but remained significantly below pre-pandemic levels, while indirect hours stayed elevated at about 5.7 per month. In other words, FOTC preserved total “dose” but redistributed effort in a more indirect-heavy pattern that persisted even after the crisis.
Changes in direct activities: From outings to screens and back again
The composition of direct time changed sharply. Pre-pandemic, in-person outings and activities (for example, sports, meals, community events) dominated direct contact, accounting for up to 60 percent or more of direct time in early years, while electronic and virtual communication represented a smaller but growing share. As the pandemic unfolded, electronic, virtual, and written contact surged, rising to roughly two-thirds of direct interactions, while in-person outings dropped to about a quarter of direct time. Home visits also increased, often serving as socially distanced opportunities to drop off food, supplies, or school materials and to have brief outdoor check-ins.
School visits and transportation of youth (outside of joint outings) declined significantly during the pandemic and did not fully bounce back, even as restrictions lifted. As in-person activities became feasible again, outings recovered and eventually exceeded electronic contact in frequency, reaching a greater share of direct time than before COVID-19, although within a slightly lower overall level of direct hours. Taken together, these patterns suggest that mentors and youth adapted to remote and hybrid modes when necessary but remained eager to return to in-person activities when conditions allowed.
Changes in indirect activities: Caregiver contact and planning as anchors
Indirect activities were more stable, but there were meaningful shifts. Contact with caregivers and other supportive adults was consistently the most frequent indirect activity across all time periods, and its proportion of indirect time remained relatively steady. Communication with school staff and teachers also remained relatively stable, with predictable dips during summer months, indicating that mentors sustained school linkages even during remote or hybrid schooling.
Research and activity planning increased during COVID-19, from approximately one fifth to more than one quarter of indirect time, as mentors identified virtual resources, new engagement strategies, and supports for youth and families. After the crisis eased, this planning time returned to pre-pandemic levels. Time spent on planning outings that never happened decreased substantially during the pandemic and stayed low, suggesting that mentors and chapters became more efficient and realistic about what could be implemented. The data also reflect increased professional development early in the pandemic, with FOTC providing training on remote engagement, social and emotional well-being, and cultural responsiveness, and creating opportunities for mentors to support one another across chapters.
How this fits into the larger mentoring literature
Conceptually, this study extends the mentoring literature by focusing on implementation dynamics under stress within a professionalized program. It aligns with ecological systems theory and positive youth development by treating mentoring as a multi-level, context-embedded process, rather than a simple “dose of adult attention”. The authors are not asking whether mentoring works in general, but how a specific program adjusted its practices to preserve core developmental supports when external conditions changed dramatically.
The findings fit with prior work suggesting that professional mentors, supported by stable employment, supervision, and training, may be better equipped to navigate complex adversity than volunteers who receive more limited support and are themselves juggling multiple demands (as noted in the article’s references to DuBois and Karcher, Lakind and colleagues, and others). They also echo research on the importance of relationship consistency, mentor retention, and organizational support for mentor persistence, especially in crisis conditions. At the same time, this study complicates simple narratives about the “magic” of face-to-face contact by showing that meaningful support can be sustained through a mix of virtual, home-based, and indirect activities.
The work also contributes to ongoing debates about hybrid and e-mentoring. Many programs shifted online during COVID-19, but few have such detailed time-use data over multiple years. Here, we see that mentors were able to maintain contact and redistribute effort across modes without reducing total time. That invites more nuanced questions: Which combinations of in-person, virtual, and indirect activities are most protective under different conditions? For which youth? At what developmental stages?
Limitations and cautions
Several limitations are worth keeping in mind. First, the study does not report youth outcomes for this period. We do not yet know whether maintaining stable total hours and adjusting activity patterns actually preserved or improved developmental trajectories or prevented declines relative to control youth. Second, the sample is limited to one professional program and to youth who had already been in long-term relationships with their mentors for several years as of 2016. It is not clear whether newer relationships or programs with less structure and fewer resources could replicate this level of resilience
Third, developmental change is confounded with pandemic effects. Youth aged from early to late adolescence during the observation window, and we would expect their engagement and needs to evolve even without a global crisis. The authors do not include covariates or control for age or cohort in their analyses, in part because of sample size and the exploratory nature of the work, so findings should be interpreted as descriptive patterns rather than causal effects. Finally, post-pandemic estimates are based on a smaller number of youth, as many had graduated from FOTC by that time, which can make those averages less stable.
Why this matters for mentoring practice
For practitioners and program leaders, the study offers several concrete lessons.
Professional infrastructure supports continuity. FOTC’s ability to maintain total hours and quickly reconfigure activities rested on having full-time, paid mentors with benefits, strong supervisory structures, centralized data, and a national office that provided training and coordination. Volunteer-based programs may not be able to fully emulate this, but they can adopt elements, such as more systematic tracking of mentor time, proactive crisis planning, and stronger peer support structures for mentors.
Indirect work is not secondary. The stability of total hours and the increased share of indirect time during COVID-19 suggest that much of the “holding” function of mentoring during crises may occur through work with caregivers, schools, and other adults, as well as through planning and problem-solving. Programs might want to explicitly recognize and value these activities, rather than focusing exclusively on mentor–youth outings as the primary indicator of program quality.
Hybrid models can be purposeful rather than ad hoc. FOTC’s pattern of surging virtual contact, increased research and planning, and increased home visits was not random; it reflected organized problem-solving within and across chapters. Programs can plan ahead by developing clear guidelines for how to shift activities when in-person contact is constrained, including minimum expectations for contact that can be met via multiple modes.
Mentor support is critical. FOTC invested in professional development and structured opportunities for mentors to connect with one another, share ideas, and address feelings of isolation and burnout. Even volunteer programs can borrow this principle by creating communities of practice, group supervision, or regular reflective sessions, particularly during disruptive periods.
So what now?
The main takeaway is that mentoring programs can remain active and supportive during major crises, but this requires intentional organizational design and a broader view of what “mentoring work” entails. For programs, one practical next step is to examine how mentors currently distribute their time across direct and indirect activities and consider how that distribution would shift, or need to shift, under conditions like school closures or public health emergencies. Another step is to identify minimal investments in mentor training, data tracking, and peer support that could boost resilience without overwhelming already stretched staff.
For researchers, an important forward-looking question is how these detailed implementation patterns relate to youth outcomes. Are youth whose mentors maintained higher total hours, or particular mixes of direct and indirect activities, better off academically, socially, or emotionally after crises? And can similar patterns be achieved in programs that rely primarily on volunteers or operate with far fewer resources? Answering these questions will be key to translating the lessons from FOTC’s experience into broader, evidence-informed guidance for the mentoring field.
