Evaluation of the Norwegian Nightingale project

1. Evaluation of the Norwegian Nightingale project Elisiv Bakketeig Norwegian Social Research The Nightingale 4. International Conference 25. October 2013

2. The Norwegian Nightingale project • A three year project initiated in 2008 • Involved 8 university colleges/universities • Includes children 8-12 years with minority background • Social work students as mentors • Duration: 1 school year • Administered by coordinators at the university colleges/universities • Contact persons in primary schools that has pupils that participates in the project.

3. Main objectives • to increase cultural sensitivity among child welfare workers by giving them better knowledge about children, young people and families with minority backgrounds • to encourage children and young people with minority backgrounds to complete their Upper Secondary School exams and go on to higher education

4. Research questions • How do mentors and children experience the Nightingale mentoring project and in what ways have they profited by participating? • Has the project been organized and implemented in accordance with the Nightingale objectives?

5. Research methods and data • A multi-method design: analysis of documents, interviews, observation and questionnaires • A multi-informant approach: children, mentors, coordinators, contact persons and the project director in the Ministry of Children, equality and inclusion • A process evaluation. To track changes over time, we collected data from the start of the school year in 2009 until the end of the school year in 2011. The children answered questionnaires at the start and at the end of each school year. • Data from 8 different university colleges/universities

6. Characteristics • Sample: 189 children and 149 mentors • Typical mentoring child: • a pupil • class five to seven in elementary school • Asian or African background • proportion of boys and girls were about similar • Typical mentor: • woman • aged 20-24 years, • Norwegian of origin • first year of her social work studies

7. Low attrition a sign of success • About 400 children and 400 mentors participated in total during the three year trial period. • The attrition rate was about 3% for the mentors and 4% for the children • Low attrition rate indicate that the Nightingale project is functioning well • The coordinators and contact persons did an important job to keep the attrition rate low

8. Mentors and mentees participated in a wide range of activities • Leisure activities; ex. bowling, going to a café, to go window shopping • Sport related activities;ex. go skiing or ice skating in the wintertime, go swimming, go on a bicycle trip • Creative home based activities; to draw, paint, make Easter or Christmas decorations etc. • Public activities; museums, art galleries, visiting open farms, amusement parks etc.

9. The activities are important to the children • They experienced new activities • Learned to do new things • Made new friends • Experienced a different and more social life • They got an adult to talk to • They got time for peace and quiet • Increased knowledge about their local communities are shared within the family.

10. The relationship between mentors and children • The relationship was described as very good and hardly ever characterized by conflict • Using the Mentoring Alliance Scale, the mentors judged the quality of the relationship to be very good and the closeness of the relationship to be good as well. These experiences were shared by the children • Minor differences in outcomes: • Older children and boys profited a little less compared to younger children and girls • Some of the older boys with Asian background were a little less positive to confide in their female mentors

11. Effects on children's school well-being, language skills and social competence • The children liked very much to go to school at the start and at end of the year of mentoring • The children who needed to improve their Norwegian and their social skills did so, at least to some extent, and seen from the mentors point of view • A smaller proportion of the children participating during the final year needed better Norwegian or social skills at the outset

12. How the mentors profited • Their expectations to being a mentor were fulfilled • They learnt things through the mentoring activities that they would utilize in their future work • Mentoring had given themincreased understanding of children and families with minority backgrounds • But, lower learning outcome about working with children and families with minority backgrounds among mentors in 2011 compared to 2010 • Increased knowledge may have been more about general communication with the children and their parents in a multicultural context, than increased competence about actual cultural and communicative differences.

13. All in all: Very promising results Some questions for closer consideration: • Who shall the Nightingale project be a project for? • What is a suitable amount of challenges in the target group of children to secure optimal learning benefit for the children and the mentors? The Nightingale project has a large potential to enrich the livesof many children with minority background and to benefit students that will work with these groups on a daily basis in their professional lives.