Fostering Healthy Futures for Teens: An RCT

This study will implement and evaluate a mentoring program designed to promote positive youth
development and reduce adverse outcomes among maltreated adolescents with open child welfare
cases. Teenagers who have been maltreated are at heightened risk for involvement in
delinquency, substance use, and educational failure as a result of disrupted attachments with
caregivers and exposure to violence within their homes and communities. Although youth
mentoring is a widely used prevention approach nationally, it has not been rigorously studied
for its effects in preventing these adverse outcomes among maltreated youth involved in the
child welfare system. This randomized controlled trial will permit us to implement and
evaluate the Fostering Healthy Futures for Teens (FHF-T) program, which will use mentoring
and skills training within an innovative positive youth development (PYD) framework to
promote adaptive functioning and prevent adverse outcomes. Graduate student mentors will
deliver 9 months of prevention programming in teenagers' homes and communities. Mentors will
focus on helping youth set and reach goals that will improve their functioning in five
targeted "REACH" domains: Relationships, Education, Activities, Career, and Health. In
reaching those goals, mentors will help youth build social-emotional skills associated with
preventing adverse outcomes (e.g., emotion regulation, communication, problem solving). The
randomized controlled trial will enroll 234 racially and ethnically diverse 8th and 9th grade
youth (117 intervention, 117 control), who will provide data at baseline prior to
randomization, immediately post-program and 15 months post program follow-up. The aims of the
study include testing the efficacy of FHF-T for high-risk 8th and 9th graders in preventing
adverse outcomes and examining whether better functioning in positive youth development
domains mediates intervention effects. It is hypothesized that youth randomly assigned to the
FHF-T prevention condition, relative to youth assigned to the control condition, will
evidence better functioning on indices of positive youth development in the REACH domains
leading to better long-term outcomes, including adaptive functioning, high school graduation,
career attainment/employment, healthy relationships, and quality of life.