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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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Formato: | Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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BioMed Central
2009
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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'. |
format | Text |
id | pubmed-2640473 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2009 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
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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