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Are youth mentoring programs good value-for-money? An evaluation of the Big Brothers Big Sisters Melbourne program Moodie, Marjory L. and Fisher, Jane 2009, Are youth mentoring programs good value-for-money? An evaluation of the Big Brothers Big Sisters Melbourne program, B M C Public Health, vol. 9, no. 41, pp. 1-9. Attached Files Name Description MIMEType Size Downloads moodie-areyouthmentoring-2009.pdf Published version application/pdf 243.67KB 48 Title Are youth mentoring programs good value-for-money? An evaluation of the Big Brothers Big Sisters Melbourne program Author(s) Moodie, Marjory L. Fisher, Jane Journal name B M C Public Health Volume number 9 Issue number 41 Start page 1 End page 9 Publisher BioMed Central Ltd. Place of publication London, England Publication date 2009-01-30 ISSN 1471-2458 Summary 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'. Notes 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. Language eng Field of Research 111704 Community Child Health Socio Economic Objective 920501 Child Health HERDC Research category C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal ERA Research output type C Journal article HERDC collection year 2009 Copyright notice ©2009, Moodie and Fisher Persistent URL http://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30019480 Document type: Journal Article Collections: Public Health Research, Evaluation, and Policy Cluster Open Access Collection Related Links Link Description Connect to published version (restricted access) Go to link with your DU access privileges     Unless expressly stated otherwise, the copyright for items in DRO is owned by the author, with all rights reserved. Every reasonable effort has been made to ensure that permission has been obtained for items included in DRO. If you believe that your rights have been infringed by this repository, please contact drosupport@deakin.edu.au. Versions Version Filter Type Wed, 16 Sep 2009, 09:23:41 EST Thu, 17 Sep 2009, 09:26:58 EST Thu, 17 Sep 2009, 09:28:47 EST Tue, 01 Dec 2009, 11:32:30 EST Fri, 07 Jan 2011, 14:01:25 EST Fri, 07 Jan 2011, 14:08:53 EST Filtered Full Citation counts: Cited 3 times in Scopus Search Google Scholar Access Statistics: 431 Abstract Views, 48 File Downloads  -  Detailed Statistics Created: Wed, 16 Sep 2009, 09:23:39 EST by Sally Morrigan

Every reasonable effort has been made to ensure that permission has been obtained for items included in DRO. If you believe that your rights have been infringed by this repository, please contact drosupport@deakin.edu.au.