Mentoring: Can you get too much of a ‘good thing’? Proposing enhancements to the ‘effectiveness framework’ the England and Wales Prison and Probation Service

Mentor characteristics

The most prominent mentor characteristics observed by mentors and mentees to be directly associated with engendering mentee’s agency were a sense or perception of genuine care, compassion and interest in the individual mentee. This aligns with Buck’s (2018) highlighting of care and listening as two of the three core conditions of peer mentoring, and genuine care as one of six factors in quality supervision (Shapland et al., 2012). Interviews indicated that trust was engendered by the mentor ‘caring’ which facilitated the mentor being able to guide the mentee. If a correct balance of trust and guidance was reached, a mentee’s agency was supported and the mentee appeared able to build their agency towards addressing needs and challenges, guided and supported by the mentor. However, in circumstances where dependency was observed, mentees trusted their mentor but seemed to consider that their mentor was better skilled in fixing problems than themselves. The mentee had put all their trust in the skills of the mentor to ‘fix things’ rather than developing confidence and their own agency in addressing goals and tasks.

Importantly, analysis indicated that such a tipping point was some way into a mentoring relationship. The early stages of a developing mentoring relationship saw the trust and confidence of mentees being built by a mentor who was assisting and supporting the mentee responsively. There were many examples that mentees recounted retrospectively: ‘she’s helped me get to my appointments. I’ve had to go on assessments but I wouldn’t go on them but . . . she sort of gave me a boost to make sure I went’ (mentee). This trust and support had led to the steady development of a mentee’s agency and confidence and being able to identify outcomes linked to their own agency: ‘I’ve given up smoking all together. I’ve not drank for three months’ (mentee). In comparison, accounts where dependency could be observed had similar foundations, but the dynamics had remained with the mentor assisting and supporting the mentee to a point where the mentee had become more dependent and reliant on their mentor to ‘fix’ things: ‘she helps me out with any bill and anything there that I need sorting out. I leave it up to (my mentor). I leave it up to my mum and they both discuss it between them’ (mentee).

A mentor’s responsivity appears critical to ensuring that the mentoring relationship can steadily and organically build the agency of the mentee. Accounts detailed the inevitable issues and challenges that can present during a mentoring relationship and instances where it is necessary and entirely appropriate that the mentor supports, assists and guides the mentee. It was apparent that small, steady steps are needed to assist a mentee in developing their own agency. They were perceived to be more effective if they were incremental and also responsive to the individual mentee and their presenting needs.

Shared driving

Accounts of the dynamics of mentoring suggest that the relationship successfully progresses through many dynamic and responsive phases with ‘shared driving’; a form of ‘co-production’ with an important function of enabling agency, but if not carefully managed it can also foster dependency. One mentee described their mentor relationship as ‘like you’ve got a sat navigation system’ (service user). A mentor described this as ‘ I say you give 50 per cent, I will give 50 per cent’ (mentor).

Some phases of the relationship were driven by mentees, especially initial phases. Mentees would lead the ‘agenda’ and content of meetings through collaboration and discussion. In other phases, often when there was an issue or need, the mentor took over the ‘driving’ and steered the nature and content of meetings to support the mentee address the need:

. . . if you’re bombarding someone with a drug team number, a mental health number, a GP number, a housing number . . . or you’re just sending that person off to go and do all these half a dozen things . . . it works better, you know, that they can come to me, we can discuss their issues, we can prioritise things, and I can set the ball rolling on things and keep the person obviously involved. (Mentor)

Importantly, when the relationship is responsive and collaborative, the driving appeared to remain shared but could be steered by either a mentor or mentee.

These findings concur with Weaver et al.’s (2019) inclusive justice and co-producing change and their suggested practice principles, particularly that user involvement is best enabled where organisations or services provide a continuum of opportunities for participation. Mentee’s interest and motivation towards their active contribution have varied over the course of their mentor relationships. Together with patience, incremental steps and meaningful opportunities, the availability of a continuum of opportunities for participation reflecting different opportunities to participate to different degrees and in different ways (Weaver et al., 2019) likely supports ‘shared driving’ along an individual’s desistance journey.

Analysis indicated that the dynamics of the relationship can be affected by a take-over, rather than temporary steer of driving by either the mentor or mentee. When a mentor took over the driving for an extended period, feelings of apathy (by the mentee) and a reduction of perceived trust and collaboration emerged: ‘there were times when I reached a low, I just couldn’t be bothered’ (mentee). Outcomes were not felt to be realised ‘steps backwards’ (mentee).

In these cases, the mentee had become more passive with a reduced individual agency. For example, one service user reflected how the mentoring service and his mentor ‘has everything there that needs to be done, everything is getting done and she is sorting everything out’ (mentee).

Interestingly, there was no evidence that dependency had affected the longer-term self-esteem or well-being of the mentee. Mentees who had moved along from dependency towards authentic co-production and collaboration reflected positively on their current confidence and health.

Mentee characteristics

The necessary characteristics of a mentee that supported the mentee’s agency included motivation towards positive life goals. Examples of life goals included being substance free, employability and ceasing offending. Motivation appeared to exist on a continuum with initial motivation to engage in mentoring crucial to engagement itself. However, motivation also emerged from accounts as a key and essential characteristic that is necessary to enable the relationship to support and engender a mentee’s agency. Without motivation towards attaining their life goals, a mentee appeared to become passive and lacked agency: ‘I didn’t care about my future, I was using, I was not being good, so I didn’t care about my life and doing things I needed to’ (mentee). In many accounts, it was apparent that mentee motivation fluctuated for many reasons, not solely as a consequence of the dynamics of a mentor–mentee relationship. External circumstances, mental health, substance misuse and family relationship dynamics were all associated with variations in a mentee’s motivation to achieve positive goals. However, an absence of motivation to achieve goals was associated with passivity and dependence.

Shared goals

Throughout accounts, the importance of clear and purposeful shared goals was evident: ‘we made our plan, didn’t we and we’ve stuck to it and we’ve worked through things’ (mentee). Importantly, there was flexibility in goals and sought outcomes over time: ‘there are other things that will start to crop up and obviously, hopefully she can help or direct me with some of those as well’ (mentee). However, shared planning and collaboration, together with responsivity and realism were important features of enabling agency, rather than fostering dependency. One mentor described the importance of realism and responsivity, together with collaboration:

housing, substance misuse and benefits – can turn into easily half a dozen or more things. But then it’s identifying those needs again with the service user, making sure that they are wanting to progress on things. Again, it’s that thing, no point me saying you need to come off heroin if you’re not ready to. (Mentor)

Training content and quality is no doubt an essential element of mentor skills in this area.

It was apparent that positive experiences of mentoring that appeared to be leading towards successful outcomes and an engendered agency of a mentee featured goals that had been formulated together and shared planning towards these goals, that is, co-producing change Weaver et al. (2019). The objective of sharing the driving was to foster a sense of ownership by the mentee. In contrast, where goals were seemingly imposed albeit with the best intentions of mentors, or imposed by other social circumstances, it appeared that this led to mentee passivity and dependence.

Interestingly, the goals of the mentor when describing the service provided insight to the expected degree of collaboration and agency expected by the mentor of the mentee. Some mentors viewed mentoring goals as ‘stopping them reoffending’ (mentor) whereas others described long-term goals that involved engendered agency: ‘to make the changes in their life that cause them to reoffend in the first place’ (mentor).

Importantly, the concept of shared goals resonates with ‘assisted desistance’ (King, 2013b), that is, organisations supporting individuals to desist from crime; however, as suggested (King, 2013b), there are too many factors at play for an organisation to ‘cause’ desistance. The data suggest that shared goals enabled agency, rather than fostered dependency thereby assisting an individual’s desistance journey.

Length of relationship

The data included mentoring relationships of reported varying lengths, from 8 weeks to 24 months. Each relationship was different; with different phases, some intensive, some less intensive; and on occasion, mentees had disengaged from the relationship for a time.

Analysis did not indicate an optimum length of relationship; however, it highlighted that sub-optimal relationships were too long. However, as evidenced by the engagement literature (see Bateman and Hazel, 2013; Copsey and Rex, 2013; Shapland et al., 2012), a relationship could be sub-optimal where this is too short – something that is more readily recognised than relationships being too long. A relationship that was ‘too long’ was not evident in duration (months or days), but in the attributes of the relationship. Where dependency was apparent, the relationship was viewed to have achieved outcomes but had then tipped towards the mentor driving the relationship for an extended period fostering dependency rather than agency. The extended period of mentor driving was often significant, over a number of months. Relationships that continued to foster agency were not ‘too long’ because they continued to balance collaboration and build agency. This appears to align with Jolliffe and Farrington’s (2008) REA of youth mentoring and reoffending that: ‘. . . programmes that had a longer duration (total time period) were not more effective than shorter programmes . . .’ (p. 8); although this finding was not attributed to the dynamics of the relationship but to difficulties in recruiting high-quality mentors, or because mentoring (perhaps inevitably) continued for longer with ‘more antisocial youths’.

In summary, one of the main outcomes of a suboptimum and too long relationship was a mentee’s fostered sense of dependency.

Enhancing the ‘effectiveness’ framework

The HMPPS (2019) framework/guidance identifies ‘what we know works well’ and where mentoring is ‘less likely to work well’. These are grouped around the principles/themes detailed in the left-hand column of Table 1 with enhancements to the framework, based on the empirical findings (from this study) intended to engender agency and avoid dependency; which we propose that policy makers and practitioners adopt.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Proposed enhancements to the HMPPS framework for mentoring adapted from HMPPS (2019).

HMPPS framework – principles/themes	Proposed enhancements based on the empirical findings to foster agency and avoid dependency
Shared goals/outcome setting and review – Setting agreed achievable goals/outcomes between mentor and mentee in a realistic action plan comprising (often) small manageable goals and which are regularly reviewed.	Responsivity and realism – changing and flexing goals and outcomes over time in response to changing needs Shared driving of the relationship between the mentor and mentee
Sustainable support provided by the mentor to the mentee	Mentors maintaining a balance of trust and guidance to avoid dependency
Bringing the relationship to a definitive end	Planning at review points (between mentee and mentor) for the relationship to end
Recruitment, training and support – recruiting individuals to be mentors to match mentees and providing them with support and training to enable mentors to meet the needs and expectations of mentees.	Reflective practice – through supervision mentors encouraged to review their relationships with mentees to avoid the tipping point between agency and dependency
Management support and oversight of the mentoring relationships

HMPPS: Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service.

The principle of shared goals/outcome setting and review through a realistic action plan (HMPPS, 2019) is an explicit expression of service-user involvement which has become mainstream justice policy in the United Kingdom (see among others, HMPPS, 2020). However, the more implicit principle of flexing goals and outcomes over time in response to changing need identified in this study is perhaps less well-acknowledged although intuitively it makes sense. There are clear parallels with Clemens’ (2010) description of how initial therapist–patient relationships that evolve into a working alliance include a patient achieving a growing independence and sense of agency in directing his or her own life effectively. It is the importance of shared driving between mentee and mentor – a key finding from this study – which bears particular attention given its current absence within the HMPPS framework (HMPPS, 2019). This finding appears reflected in the informal mentoring programme that found mentors needed to ‘. . . work with offenders to set the pace of the relationship’ (Wadia and Parkinson, 2015: 5). A responsive mentoring relationship with shared driving should manage the balance between building social capital and engendering agency. Facilitating shared driving is a requirement, currently absent from the framework (HMPPS, 2019) for mentors to maintain a balance of trust and guidance to avoid dependency.

The importance of bringing the relationship to a definitive end identified in the framework (HMPPS, 2019) receives support from our study, which also suggests that this needs to be an explicit goal which should be planned and reviewed alongside other outcomes and goals in the shared action plan. While training, support and management oversight have been specified within the HMPPS framework (HMPPS, 2019), the findings suggest that the framework should be augmented to include a specific requirement within the mentor supervision process for them to regularly review their relationships with mentees to avoid the tipping point between agency and dependency.

Relationship episodes

Explored above, understandably much of the literature about engaging people with convictions is focused on just that – how to engage them. It therefore seems to go against the grain to posit that attention also needs to be paid to identifying when and how disengagement from a mentoring relationship should occur. The issue of agency versus dependency is also largely absent from the existing frameworks on effective engagement: the NOMS engaging practitioner model (Copsey and Rex, 2013), the principles of quality supervision (Shapland et al., 2012) and the multi-faceted model of engagement for disaffected young people developed by Bateman and Hazel (2013). Neither is it considered in the voluntary sector model of engagement with people with convictions proposed by Wong et al. (2018).

What do our findings suggest? There appears to be an inherent tension between non-time limited open-ended support as described by Martin et al. (2016) and our findings which suggest that engendering mentee agency requires that the relationship needs to end. It would also appear to contradict the notion of support which has the potential to flex to accommodate the zig-zag (Glaser, 1964), nomadic (Phillips, 2017) desistance journey. Perhaps open-ended mentoring needs to be conceptualised in terms of support episodes rather than a single continuous (open-ended) relationship between mentees and mentors. These would have clearly defined start and end points. Where individuals may start with the mentoring service then leave; in the future return and leave again; and so on – often several more times; each of these would be a support episode. It would also be beneficial to understand why a mentee has exited the scheme and what their social capital and agency needs were. A mentee could feel their needs have been met and their social capital has developed (e.g. access to suitable housing) but they may exit the service without having developed their agency. This would likely see the mentee subsequently return. Longitudinal research is required to study the dynamics of the mentee returner and mentor relationship in these follow-on episodes.

Disengagement as an outcome?

The nature of engagement and its sustained and dynamic process through a mentoring relationship is clearly important to delineate. Our findings indicate the need to build a working alliance that is dynamic in time and content, based on the quality of the partnership that develops between helper and the person being helped (Horvath et al., 2011). Looking towards the three dimensions of dependency described by Geurtzen et al. (2018), our findings provide some descriptive evidence of passive-submissive dependency but more descriptive evidence towards a lack of perceived alternatives. Mentoring should minimise the likelihood that continued mentee engagement is not based solely on opportunity and availability, but also motivation (Geurtzen et al., 2018). Taylor et al. (2013) noted that engagement can be both a process outcome and an output of mentoring. If engagement is to be used to measure effectiveness, then understanding the nuances of this are required in order that engagement does not become the blunt instrument that reoffending has become as an outcome measure (see among others, McNeill and Weaver 2010; Wong, 2019). Recently, one of the authors (Wong, 2019) has proposed using engagement as a proxy measure of desistance – a way of quantitatively allowing for ‘“survival analyses” of desistance efforts’ as proposed by McNeill and Weaver (2010: 11). Combining this with data on criminogenic and non-criminogenic needs met or not met and measures of changes in well-being and agency, engagement could be used to provide proxy measures of the three theorised interrelated (and non-linear) processes of primary, secondary and tertiary desistance (McNeill, 2016; McNeill and Weaver, 2010; Nugent and Schinkel, 2016). However, this study also indicates that assessing the extent to which service-user independence occurs within engagement is also critical. Assessing the effectiveness of mentoring, Maguire et al.’s (2010) approach which combines impact and outcome related data under six headings – continuity of service through the gate, quality of engagement post-release, bridging to other services, ‘distance travelled’, reoffending and qualitative evidence – has much to commend it as a useful starting point.

The projected outcomes for mentoring/social inclusion in the HMPPS (2020: 42) target operating model for the Probation Reform Programme: ‘successful transition e.g. from custody to community’ and ‘more able to manage challenging situations and to engage with services and other opportunities’ would appear to be amenable to the approach adopted by Maguire et al. (2010). However, the findings from our study suggests that successful disengagement where the mentee and mentor mutually end the relationship or relationship episode (viewed as a successful conclusion, Wadia and Parkinson, 2015) could also be considered as a performance measure. Although realism about the limitations and ‘success rates’ of mentoring is required, Wadia and Parkinson (2015) found that only 3 in 10 (95 of 289) relationships reached a ‘. . . positive, “successful” conclusion, where the offender and mentor mutually ended the relationship’ (p. 5). However, where a mentee has gained from the relationship – arguably the critical important outcome – whether or not it is mutually ended is less critical.

Duration

The duration and format of mentoring is not specified in the Probation Reform Programme operating model, this is to be devolved to regions to source according to local needs (HMPPS, 2020). The evidence on how long mentoring should last is mixed. As noted earlier Jolliffe and Farrington (2008) conclude that longer programmes (for young people) were not more effective than shorter ones. Tarling et al. (2004) suggests that mentoring should last at least 12 months. Wadia and Parkinson (2015) recommend that mentoring should be offered as long as required. The envisioning of an alternative future identity and developing the social and individual capital to achieve it demands responsive and quality support. In the absence of quality, the view of one or both partners that they are lacking attractive alternatives to gain the same outcomes (Geurtzen et al., 2018) could be a very likely scenario. Our study suggests (like much of life) it’s not how long the mentoring relationship lasts but the quality that matters.

Resources

Of course, the duration and format of mentoring is inevitably influenced/limited by resources. A balance must be achieved between social support and individual, therapeutic support. Maguire et al.’s (2010) question – ‘How thinly should the jam be spread?’ – is apposite (p. iv). However, this is a matter not just of meeting demand – how much support can be afforded to individuals who need it – as not everyone who needs it is motivated at that time to make use of it (Wadia and Parkinson, 2015). It is also one of supply – the availability of skilled capable mentors, peer and non-peer (Buck, 2018; Wadia and Parkinson, 2015) – and the training, support (to avoid emotional fatigue and burnout) and management oversight and input required, including the brokering of agency relationships for inwards and onwards referrals (Maguire et al., 2010; Wadia and Parkinson, 2015; Wong et al., 2012, 2017). Mentoring that develops social and material needs must be complemented by elements that engender individual agency in order to balance and avoid dependency. Even where these conditions are met, careful nursing of these resources is important.

The development of agency should be considered holistically. The importance of brokering other professional involvement while supporting and building family and community relationships is reinforced by therapy research. Geurtzen et al. (2018) discuss a derogation effect in the lack of perceived alternatives dimension of dependency as being when a person receiving the help and support of a professional therapist may start to perceive other (non-professional) options, such as the support of friends and family, as less attractive or less valuable. Equally, there is the potential for dependency to occur on the part of the mentor (peer or non-peer). While this was not observed in our study, we suggest that further research is required to examine this, particularly (as indicated earlier) in relation to peer mentors and mentees.

Effective monitoring and managing the mentee–mentor relationship and the balanced dynamics of building agency and self-efficacy and avoiding dependency to enable the mentee to achieve their goals are important for the mentee (and arguably the mentor also). Such ‘successful conclusions’ also free up capacity, allowing mentors to support other individuals. Further points bear emphasis. First, there may be a latent but erroneous assumption (among policy makers and commissioners) that the seemingly ‘non-professional’ informal mentoring can be delivered cheaply or for free. Studies suggest it can’t (see among others, Wong et al., 2017). Second, the deployment of peer mentors needs careful consideration and implementation to fully acknowledge that ‘peer mentoring is far from an unskilled addition or alternative to established rehabilitation approaches’ (Buck 2018: 203). Third, allied to this, a broader social change role of peer mentoring that goes beyond the function of mentoring should be encouraged (Buck, 2019).

Learning from doing

The commitment to commission mentoring as part of the Probation Reform Programme in England and Wales (HMPPS, 2020) is welcome; however, devolving this responsibility to regional Probation Services and Wales without an overarching and consistent evaluation framework is a missed opportunity to enhance the evidence base. This is akin to past mistakes such as the post-Corston (2007) ⁷ commissioning of demonstration projects for women with convictions in England where limited prior consideration was given to establishing data gathering processes which could enable effectiveness to be assessed (Hedderman et al., 2008). Furthermore, given the likely pre-dominance of voluntary sector agencies being commissioned to deliver mentoring, it will do little to enhance the limited evidence more generally around voluntary sector led support services (Hedderman and Hucklesby, 2016).