Collaborating with Families

The C&C mentor enters into relationship with families knowing that building trust takes time. The trusting mentor-family relationship is important to the overall success of C&C in helping students persist in school.

To develop trusting relationships, mentors typically go through three stages:

• predictability, when family members recognize the mentor’s reliability and dedication to keeping commitments
• dependability, when families shift to seeing the mentor as personally trustworthy, and
• faith, when family perception of the mentor is rooted in past experience.

We know that families’ trust is often earned when they see that the mentor has established a positive, committed relationship with their student. This commitment illustrates the use of Persistence-Plus by the mentor and shows families that the mentor is dedicated to helping the student be more successful in school.