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Are youth mentoring programs good value-for-money? An evaluation of the Big Brothers Big Sisters Melbourne Program

BACKGROUND: The Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) program matches vulnerable young people with a trained, supervised adult volunteer as mentor. The young people are typically seriously disadvantaged, with multiple psychosocial problems. METHODS: Threshold analysis was undertaken to determine whether i...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Moodie, Marjory L, Fisher, Jane
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2009
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2640473/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19178749
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-9-41
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author Moodie, Marjory L
Fisher, Jane
author_facet Moodie, Marjory L
Fisher, Jane
author_sort Moodie, Marjory L
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) program matches vulnerable young people with a trained, supervised adult volunteer as mentor. The young people are typically seriously disadvantaged, with multiple psychosocial problems. METHODS: Threshold analysis was undertaken to determine whether investment in the program was a worthwhile use of limited public funds. The potential cost savings were based on US estimates of life-time costs associated with high-risk youth who drop out-of-school and become adult criminals. The intervention was modelled for children aged 10–14 years residing in Melbourne in 2004. RESULTS: If the program serviced 2,208 of the most vulnerable young people, it would cost AUD 39.5 M. Assuming 50% were high-risk, the associated costs of their adult criminality would be AUD 3.3 billion. To break even, the program would need to avert high-risk behaviours in only 1.3% (14/1,104) of participants. CONCLUSION: This indicative evaluation suggests that the BBBS program represents excellent 'value for money'.
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spelling pubmed-26404732009-02-13 Are youth mentoring programs good value-for-money? An evaluation of the Big Brothers Big Sisters Melbourne Program Moodie, Marjory L Fisher, Jane BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: The Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) program matches vulnerable young people with a trained, supervised adult volunteer as mentor. The young people are typically seriously disadvantaged, with multiple psychosocial problems. METHODS: Threshold analysis was undertaken to determine whether investment in the program was a worthwhile use of limited public funds. The potential cost savings were based on US estimates of life-time costs associated with high-risk youth who drop out-of-school and become adult criminals. The intervention was modelled for children aged 10–14 years residing in Melbourne in 2004. RESULTS: If the program serviced 2,208 of the most vulnerable young people, it would cost AUD 39.5 M. Assuming 50% were high-risk, the associated costs of their adult criminality would be AUD 3.3 billion. To break even, the program would need to avert high-risk behaviours in only 1.3% (14/1,104) of participants. CONCLUSION: This indicative evaluation suggests that the BBBS program represents excellent 'value for money'. BioMed Central 2009-01-30 /pmc/articles/PMC2640473/ /pubmed/19178749 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-9-41 Text en Copyright © 2009 Moodie and Fisher; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Moodie, Marjory L
Fisher, Jane
Are youth mentoring programs good value-for-money? An evaluation of the Big Brothers Big Sisters Melbourne Program
title Are youth mentoring programs good value-for-money? An evaluation of the Big Brothers Big Sisters Melbourne Program
title_full Are youth mentoring programs good value-for-money? An evaluation of the Big Brothers Big Sisters Melbourne Program
title_fullStr Are youth mentoring programs good value-for-money? An evaluation of the Big Brothers Big Sisters Melbourne Program
title_full_unstemmed Are youth mentoring programs good value-for-money? An evaluation of the Big Brothers Big Sisters Melbourne Program
title_short Are youth mentoring programs good value-for-money? An evaluation of the Big Brothers Big Sisters Melbourne Program
title_sort are youth mentoring programs good value-for-money? an evaluation of the big brothers big sisters melbourne program
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2640473/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19178749
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-9-41
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