ABSTRACT
Traditional formal care institutions have difficulties in fulfilling their social function of providing welfare to the citizens they serve. This is partly because the influence of neoliberal ideology has individualised inequality, blaming children and youth for their “failure” in a highly urban and school segregation. The neoliberal approach emphasises that everyone can pull herself up by her bootstraps, so the role of philanthropic civil society is solely the means to generate interventions – such as some mentoring programmes – that could “help to save the poor”. Recently, we are seeing more evidence that these approaches, based on stand-alone and individualised programmes (Rhodes & Schwartz, 2016), show only modest results. However, there is also room for hope. We are seeing the flourishing of promising practices seeking the empowerment of children and youth in which the traditional role of care institutions shifts to establishing partnerships with civic organisations aiming to generate informal relationships that may empower children and youth. This chapter conceptualises the existing interrelations between mentoring and social networks and, finally, proposes an interpretative frame that takes into consideration the different levels at which access to social capital can be promoted, or not, related to critical autonomy in children and young people.
