Children of Incarcerated Parents

Big Brothers Big Sisters
As the nation’s oldest and most experienced mentoring organization, BBBS
has well-established, effective procedures for screening, matching, training, and
monitoring and supporting mentors. Its role in Amachi was to provide the
expertise and infrastructure that are necessary if mentoring relationships are
going to be able to grow and endure and, ultimately, lead to positive outcomes
for the children.
BBBS case managers, called Mentor Support Coordinators (MSCs), were
responsible for screening the volunteers, and providing supervision and support
for all of the matches by regularly contacting mentors, children, and caregivers
to uncover and help resolve problems that were occurring in the relationship. In
addition, BBBS trained the new mentors.
Amachi is a program for BBBS and a ministry for the churches.While the volunteers
recruited through congregations are BBBS mentors, they are also Amachi
mentors within their church community.The project’s staffing—the presence of
both Church Volunteer Coordinators and Mentor Support Coordinators—reflects
and supports this dual reality. One indication of the integration achieved through
the partnership is that the mentors, while they see themselves as mentoring
through their churches, often use BBBS language to describe their relationships.
They may refer to themselves as “Bigs” and their mentees as “Littles,” talk about
the importance of doing “fun” activities with the children, and speak of their
efforts to support their mentees’ growth rather than impose their own values on
them—all hallmarks of the BBBS approach to mentoring.
A Focus on Accountability
While Amachi provided multiple forms of support to mentors, it also required
accountability from both the mentors and their pastors. Data collection was at
the center of this effort and was used to monitor performance and provide feedback
so potential problems could be quickly addressed.
CVCs collected monthly information from each of their congregation’s mentors,
including the number of meetings with the mentee, the total hours they
met, what they did together, and the number of times they spoke on the telephone.
P/PV then used these data to generate a monthly report for each congregation
that provided a snapshot of each of its matches as well as the larger
picture of how its mentors were doing as a group.
HOW AMACHI WORKS 9