Screening
- Recruiting mentors (also recruiting young people)
- Challenges with fingerprinting right now
Home visits
- Some are not doing them at all
- Mentors are asked to keep mentees out of their homes until in person checks can resume
- Safety concerns and need to ensure comfort with both mentor and case manager
- Virtual home visits are challenging and flawed
- Concern mentors will bring mentees into the home before it’s safe
- Virtual Mentor Interviews:
- Difficult to detect nonverbal cues
- Harder to get to know the volunteer
- Seeing more drop off after virtual interviews than when in person
- Streamline paperwork with interviews (DocuSign through TechSoup)
- Virtual Training
- Complicated as trainings are often hands on and discussion-based
Matching
Concerns:
- Feeling like they are in limbo, trying to figure out how to move forward
- Virtual matches: concerned about building strong connections and facilitating that
- Worried about follow-through
- Student interest in getting a mentor and being mentored virtually
- Matches not being able to spend quality time together at the beginning of their relationship
- Various degrees of comfortability when meeting in person
- COPPA compliance (Federal Trade Commission – Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) – LINK
- Concerns about how it plays out when matches finally meet in person
- Youth not showing up to match meetings
- Difficulty with access internet/devices (especially since some school-districts reclaimed devices over the summer)
- Burnout of Screentime
Ideas/Successes:
- Make sure families are comfortable first before making matches
- Make sure mentors are comfortable and being safe
- Make sure there are virtual options for those who are not comfortable meeting in person
- Creating and distributing guidelines around socially distant meet ups for matches
- Keep any activities simple – they should need minimal instruction/guidance
- Perhaps take a page out of the online dating books
- A variety of communication styles – shorter and more often communications
- Situation Planning for recruitment, school-based referrals, school-based programming, and how to do sports-based mentoring (without the sports)
Allowing Matches to Meet in Person (thank you for sharing!):
- Denver Kids – Guidelines | COVID Guide
- Partners – Match Guidelines | Staff Guidelines
Other Resources Discussed and Shared:
- PowerPoint: Tips on Screening & Matching During COVID – LINK
- MENTOR Colorado Free Consulting (Technical Assistance): https://comentoring.org/program-resources/technical-assistance/
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