Från Odyssén till Hasselas mentorskapsprogram - en kvalitativ studie om mentorskap utifrån nyinstitutionell teori

Sammanfattning: Authors: Ellen Isakson and Malin Skohg Title: From Odyssey to Hassela’s mentoring program – an empirical study of mentoring in a new institutional perspective [translated title] Supervisor: Torbjörn Hjort The purpose of this paper was to understand how Hassela’s mentoring program could be understood from the new institutional theory of translation. To understand this we have individually interviewed four mentors at Hassela’s mentoring program, two social caseworkers working with youths and one assistant director at the department for children and youth. The method we used is semi-structured interviews. Findings in the study show how mentoring is an idea traveling in time with only a metaphor and an abstract description as company. Neither scholars nor professionals have compiled an established way for how mentoring should be practiced. The result of this is a monumental space of translation for the local actors to develop a practice fitting into their context. Hassela’s mentoring program is therefore a program for high-risk youth in need of an adult guidance to overcome their social, behavioral and family-based problems. Adolescences get a mentor as a law prescribed benefit from the social services, which traditionally is not the way for a mentoring program, but because of the translational space Hassela’s mentoring program is a mentoring program as any other. Findings in the study also show that the importance of relationship and accessibility are equalized within our empirical study, scholars and practices. Although Hassela’s mentoring program could be seen as a traveling idea of mentoring, it could also be seen as a traveling idea of a benefit from the social services. Whether it is a traveling idea of mentoring or a benefit Hassela’s mentoring program, as according to most of the studies of mentoring programs, a beneficial relationship ending with a more promising future for adolescences.