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• Mentoring literature contains diverse, but as yet unclassified, mentoring relationship types. • Mentoring for young people young people transitioning out of care must address specific contextual needs and barriers. • More attention is needed in mentoring literature on the policy context and the nature of the gender and power in mentoring relationships. In Australia, out-of-home care (OoHC) is provided to safeguard children and young people unable to live with their families. Typically, this care stops at 18 years of age, leaving many young people without the relational support to find employment and stable accommodation. Mentoring is increasingly proposed as a way to support young people exiting care, though the types of mentoring and contextual factors vary considerably. This rapid review aims to identify key features of mentoring programs that support young people in OoHC. This paper utilised a rapid review methodology to survey the academic literature on mentoring programs with young people in OoHC. The authors conducted literature searches in October 2022 using a search string designed to provide targeted exposure to the literature. Articles were limited by year and location, with the specific search string and limitations applied to the Scopus database, and Proquest and Informit platforms. Utilising literature, we identified five overlapping models for mentor–mentee relationships into a provisional typology of five categories based on varying levels of formality and familiarity in the relationships: 'formal', 'natural', 'near-age', 'peer', and 'therapeutic'. In doing so, we identified seven important features of mentor–mentee relationships: shared experiences, relationship duration, boundaries and other relationships, identity and self-worth, educational contexts, power and participation, and role modelling. We identified four issues relating to mentoring in OoHC that are informed by the needs and barriers experienced by young people: training and support for mentors, unique challenges faced by young people in OoHC, transition out of care, and the matching process. Lastly, we established what might impact mentoring programs buy critically reflecting on the policy context and notions of empowerment. This rapid review of mentoring programs for care-experienced young people seeking employment offers valuable insights to inform future programs. The findings highlight diverse and unclassified mentoring relationship types, the absence of anticipated gender-specific findings, a lack of examination of the policy context, and a need for more robust conceptualisations of empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Protocol for a study of quality improvement in Australian ECEC services. • A sequential three-phase mixed-methods design informed by ecological systems theory. • Research-industry partnerships with government authorities and early childhood researchers. • Scale and depth in sample identification, data selection and analytical techniques. International recognition of the early years as a crucial foundational period has led to the design and implementation of quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS) that define, communicate, and monitor the components of quality in early childhood education and care (ECEC). The aim of these policies is to achieve effective quality assurance and improvement through a system-oriented approach to assessment and evaluation. Informed by ecological systems theory, this paper outlines a three-phase, mixed-methods design for researching a national sample of child care centres that showed overall improvement on the Australian National Quality Standard (NQS) assessment and rating (A&R) criteria. The study samples are drawn from a national dataset of centre-based child care services with two or more A&R rounds and an initial rating of Working Towards NQS (N = 1,935). The results of this study will provide insights into the macro-, exo-, meso- and micro-systems level factors and strategies that support quality in ECEC services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives Young people's participation in decision making that affects them is increasingly recognised and valued as a right. Youth participation in mental health settings is fundamental to service design and delivery, and is beneficial for the young people as well as the organisation. Headspace recognises the many benefits of youth participation with its national and local youth participation initiatives. In 2013, headspace Gosford in Australia established its current youth participation model, called the Youth Alliance (YA), consisting of 12 young people. These young people contribute ideas and opinions around service design and delivery, and participate in a range of activities. Method This paper presents the findings of a focus group conducted with the YA immediately following recruitment. All 12 young people participated in a two hour focus group which sought to identify the key reasons these young people joined the YA, and what they hope to achieve in their capacity of YA consultants. Results The two main reasons participants joined the YA are to help ‘overcome barriers to help seeking and ensure young people get the support they need’ and ‘to build confidence, social skills and make new friends’. The barriers to help seeking identified by the participants are consistent with those outlined in the literature. Conclusion Youth participation in youth mental health settings is beneficial to young people as well as organisations and the community, and it is crucial that strategies are put in place to increase youth participation. The ways in which these young people perceive their participation as beneficial to themselves as well as the organisation and the community is the focus of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The study shows how mentoring programs create supportive communities for youth. • Mentors felt more prepared to support youth after training & practice as a mentor. • This helps to illustrate group- or community-level benefits from mentoring. • The paper shows what a "mentor rich" community may look like. Having a trusted adult in one's life can be a key support to young people in making and managing the transitions of young adulthood, however not all young people have access to such an adult. Formal youth mentoring programs aim to fill this gap for individual young people, but there is less understanding of the capacity of such programs to contribute to community-building and skill-building, so that there are more adults with the skills and sensibilities to support young people generally and be trusted adults for them, wherever they come across them in their communities. Drawing on a qualitative study of 15 mentors in an Australian youth mentoring program for high school students, this paper therefore examines mentors' perceptions of the capacity of the program to help cultivate supportive communities for young people, beyond those specifically mentored. It does this by examining how the mentors expected or anticipated applying the mentoring skills they learnt through the program to the support of other young people in the future. The findings show that, with some limits, mentors perceived that the program built their capacity to better support young people in the future, including young people beyond the program participants, such as those in their families, personal communities, workplaces and other volunteering contexts. These findings highlight that beyond contributing to youth support at an individual-level, youth mentoring programs may also hold some benefits at a group- or community-level, at least from the perspective of mentors. Implications for youth mentoring research, program delivery and funding are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internationally, there is growing interest in the adoption of alternative responses that divert families, when safe to do so, away from the courts and out-of-home care system. However, it is widely recognised that the crisis-driven nature of statutory child protection in conjunction with the dominance of risk-adverse practice can inhibit practitioners' abilities to implement such interventions. In Queensland (Australia), 'intervention with parental agreement' (IPA) is an alternative response that allows the statutory child protection authority to work with families without a court order. Drawing on the perspectives of 30 practitioners recruited from the statutory child protection authority and tertiary non-government family support services, this paper explores the local factors that shape how IPA policy is implemented in practice. In particular, the paper considers the mechanisms that the leadership team within a statutory child protection office can use to shape a local practice culture that supports and is conducive to collaborative IPA practice. • Local practice context and culture contributes to inter-site variations in the implementation of parental agreements • Attitudes towards the nature and scope of non-government tertiary family preservation services in parental agreement cases vary • Branch office leaders from the child protection authority play a key role in creating local practice cultures towards the parental agreements • The attitudes and preferred practice approaches of those in leadership positions have implications for if and how parental agreements are used • When branch office leaders support family preservation, local practice cultures can challenge the dominance of risk-adverse practice [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]