Ground-breaking research into the efficacy of Creative Mentoring

Since November 2020, we have been working away quietly on a Creative Mentoring research programme generously funded by and in partnership with What Works for Children’s Social Care, an organisation who aim to improve the lives of children and families through setting standards and generating the best research into what works for children’s social care.

Are you a Virtual School, Artist or Creative Practitioner and want to get involved?

If you want to hear more about our ground-breaking research with King’s College London and What Works for Children’s Social Care, just drop our Youth Programme Manager Emily York an email at Emily.york@themightycreatives.com.

The Evidence Development and Incubation Team at King’s College London (EDIT) were selected as lead evaluators, to support us to test the efficacy of our Creative Mentoring model across the East Midlands.

Whilst we know the real power of Creative Mentoring and the impacts it can have on care experienced children and young people; this rigorous research programme will help us to ensure that more children and young people have access to Creative Mentoring in the future!

What is Creative Mentoring?

The tried and tested Creative Mentoring model (pioneered by Derbyshire Virtual School) has been developed in partnership with and for children and young people in the care system who are at greatest risk of not being in education, employment and training.

A Creative Mentor is commissioned to work with the child or young person, and is briefed jointly by social care professionals and schools. They get to know the individual and introduce creative activities such as film, drama, music, poetry, photography and stories to help them safely explore the world around them, learn new skills, communicate, and address personal and emotional issues from an artistic distance.

If you want to find out more about the Creative Mentoring process, please visit our programme page.

What is the research?

The programme will provide Creative Mentoring to a group of looked after children/young people (CYP) and care leavers aged between 15-18, with the aim to reawaken aspirations, explore possibilities, reimagine the future, build employability skills and develop confidence through positive socialisation.

The research design, led by colleagues at EDIT, consists of a two-armed randomised control trial, where a group of CYP will be selected at random to either receive Creative Mentoring (the treatment group) or work with EDIT for the purposes of the research (the control group). This approach will offer the ability to compare both quantitative and qualitative outcomes to test the efficacy of the model and its impacts on the following:

How does participation in the Creative Mentoring programme impact looked after children’s and care leavers’…

• educational attainment?
• educational qualifications?
• behaviours towards peers and professionals?
• ability to develop relationships with peers and professionals?
• self-esteem?
• resilience?
• wellbeing?

We will be working with around 240 CYP aged 15-18 from several Virtual Schools across the East Midlands throughout this year.

This is a great opportunity, not just for the future of Creative Mentoring, but for the futures of children and young people’s lives, with the opportunity to inform and shape the provision to benefit current and future generations of children and young people.

Why a Randomised Controlled Trial?

A randomised controlled trial is the best way to address unobservable factors that may influence the desired outcomes of the Creative Mentoring model. It minimises any systematic differences between the treatment and control groups and ensures that each young person has been fairly and anonymously chosen to participate. It also…

• provides a strong basis on which to identify what impact Creative Mentoring has had for young people.
• ensures Virtual Schools who participate will know whether Creative Mentoring is effective for young people in their area, which will help allocate funding to practices that have been proven to work for their children and young people.
• has been approved by King’s College London’s Research Ethics Committee.

Are you a Virtual School, Artist or Creative Practitioner and want to get involved?

Don’t forget, to find out more about our ground-breaking research with King’s College London and What Works for Children’s Social Care, just drop our Youth Programme Manager Emily York an email at Emily.york@themightycreatives.com.

Why not check out our other blogs on Creative Mentoring?