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The demand for child mental health services, including those provided by psychologists, counselors, and social workers, exceeds the supply. This trend is expected to continue or worsen unless there are substantial structural changes in how mental health services are provided. We propose a framework for paraprofessional youth mentors, defined as a subgroup of professionally supervised, non‐expert volunteer or paid mentors to whom aspects of professional helping tasks are delegated. Our proposal is aligned with historical and modern solutions to scaling mental health services, and this framework could simultaneously increase the number of youth receiving evidence‐based mental health services and reduce the burden on existing systems of care. The framework defines three plausible tasks for paraprofessional mentors: (1) reducing barriers to mental health service, (2) increasing engagement in services, and (3) providing direct services. The safety and effectiveness of these task‐shifting efforts will hinge on competency‐based training and evaluation, supervision by professionals, and documentation of services rendered, all of which the field of youth mentoring currently lacks. We describe several requisite scientific, institutional, and regulatory advances that will be necessary to realize this variant of youth mentoring for a subgroup of youth who are presenting for assistance with mental health problems. Highlights: We propose a framework for delegating some mental health service tasks to paraprofessional mentors.Appropriately scaled, paraprofessionals can reduce the burden of youth's mental health difficulties.With training, a subset of mentors could increase engagement in and deliver mental health services.Training, supervision, and documentation of services will be critical to scale.Paraprofessional youth mentorship requires research to establish efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Social capital plays a key role in college and career success, and research indicates that a dearth of on‐campus connections contributes to challenges first‐generation college students face in effectively navigating the college environment. This study investigates a novel intervention that focuses on the development of skills and attitudes to empower first‐generation college students to cultivate social capital and on‐campus connections during the transition to college. A mixed methods, explanatory design was used to evaluate impacts and processes of the intervention among first‐generation college students (n = 164) in the context of an ethnically diverse, urban, public university in the Northeast. Results indicated that students who participated in the intervention demonstrated improved attitudes and behaviors around seeking support in college, closer relationships with instructors, and higher GPAs at the end of their first year in college. These results suggest the potential benefits of a relatively scalable approach to supporting the needs of first‐generation college students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]