Healing-Centered Mentoring™

An Overview

Healing-Centered Mentoring™

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Why Healing-Centered Mentoring™?

The demand for child mental health services, including those provided by psychologists, counselors, and social workers, has long exceeded the supply; this trend is expected to continue or worsen unless substantial structural changes are made in how mental health services are provided (Society for Community Research and Action, 2021). Through a Healing-Centered Mentoring™ approach, YMC seeks to arm as many helping professionals as possible with the evidence-based tools necessary to bridge our society’s broadening chasm between those youth who need mental health support and those who can access it. Because mentoring already draws on a wide array of established therapeutic techniques, research has shown that mentoring can be leveraged to reduce mental health stigma—especially for youth and families who mistrust mental health services—to support the expansion of mentoring initiatives that promote the health and well-being of young people and families most impacted by systems of oppression.

In addition, because helping professionals are prone to burnout, and many have experienced trauma, YMC hopes that Healing-Centered Mentoring™ strategies can be used to support the restoration of their own well-being.

We believe Healing-Centered Mentoring™ represents the future of the field and has significant implications for how mentoring will be approached moving forward.

Healing-Centered Mentoring™ IS

  • A skills training program for mentoring practitioners to deliver light-touch mental health services
  • An approach that leverages youth strengths
  • Based on Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)

Healing-Centered Mentoring™ IS NOT

  • Clinical therapy or mental health counseling
  • "Trauma-informed" mentoring
  • A deficit-based approach to language, youth development, or healing
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  • Understand how to leverage technology-delivered interventions to produce improvements in health, school adjustment, stress management, depression, and anxiety in youth
  • Deliver HCM training to organization's staff and mentors
  • Provide feedback on the HCM framework that will support the improvement of the program
  • Learn how to track mental health outcomes and provide support to youth based on data
  • Share lessons learned with the broader community and solicit additional support
  • The history of mentoring and positive youth development in the United States
  • Mental health challenges for youth in the United States
  • Child and Adolescent Development
  • Interactions between youth, social systems, and institutions
  • The impacts of race, social class, gender, sexual orientation, and religion on adolescent development
  • Key components of effective mentor-mentee relationships in adolescence
  • Roles, responsibilities, and boundaries when supporting children, youth, and families
  • Adolescent Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) skills training
    • Core Mindfulness
    • Distress Tolerance
    • Emotional Regulation
    • Interpersonal Effectiveness
  • Approaches to technology-delivered interventions
  • Child and Adolescent Mental Health Policy overview
  • Building a self-care regimen as a helping professional

YMC has assembled an all-star team of youth development practitioners, mental health professionals, and other passionate community members to develop and deliver content for this innovative program. 

We are proud to work with the following people on the HCM Working Committee: 

  • Margaret A. Brunson, Ph.D., MPA
  • Shauna M. Cooper, Ph.D.
  • Atrayus O. Goode, MSOD
  • Micah Griffin, Ph.D.
  • Melchor Quick Hall, Ph.D.
  • Harvey Hinton, III, Ph.D.
  • Marcus Howard, Ph.D.
  • Aidil Ortiz, MA
  • Frank Pollock, MBA
  • Kennedy Ruff
  • Jasmin L. Spain, M.Ed.

Fellows will receive up to 10 sessions of coaching over the course of the 7-month program from International Coaching Federation (ICF) Coaches.

  • Kimberly Boyd, MSW, PCC, Founder & President, Strategic Clarity
  • Lori Nero Ghosal, Ed.D., PCC, Founder and CEO, Inner Quest Coaching
  • Kelly Drummond, Ed.D., PCC, SHRM-CP, Founder, My Soul in Bloom

Meet the Healing-Centered Mentoring™ Fellows

The Healing-Centered Mentoring™ Fellows are a dynamic, multidisciplinary group of leaders who are dedicated to improving the implementation of specific mentoring standards and practices through the increased use of evidence-based practices and technology that protects and promotes the mental health and psychosocial wellbeing of youth. Together, they will bridge our society’s broadening chasm between those youth who need mental health support and those who can access it.

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Our Guiding Principles

Learn more about how YMC conducts our work through the lens of racial equity.

CRITICAL MENTORING
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