A Web of Support captures the connections between various relationships and supports in a young person’s life.
Webs of support are not considered to be diffuse networks. Instead, relationships in a web of support tend to be clustered within contexts (e.g., home, school), and youth need to negotiate those relationships across contexts. The Webs of Support framework by Varga and Zaff (2017, 2018) offers a new way to think about relationships and overall youth development, and can inform how practitioners and policymakers consider and develop the most effective strategies for supporting youth. The Webs of Support framework to describe how youth relate to adults and peers in their lives and how these relationships provide the developmental supports necessary for young people to be on a positive developmental trajectory
The Web of Support Interview Tool. Conceptualized by Varga and Zaff (2018), this tool was adapted for use by mentors and mentoring programs and made available through the National Mentoring Resource Center (NMRC) in 2024 (see link and Assessments page). It helps reveal: Who supports youth; How they support youth; How strong their network of support is? And to whom do youth feel they could turn for anything they need? The five types of support identified for each tie or relationship in the web are shown in Table 1 below.
Information on assessment and use of the framework can be found in the 2017 paper written by Varga and Zaff (see Research page) and described in more detail in their subsequent article in 2018 (see Research page). It has been employed as a guiding framework or interpretive lens and used as an assessment tool in multiple studies since then. Some of these can be found on the Research page. Most recently, its value in clinical settings was showcased in an open access 2025 Journal of Lifestyle Medicine case study titled "Connecting in a Disconnected World," authored by Karcher and Zaff (see Research page).
All webs of support can include strong ties, weak ties, and anchor relationships.Strong tiesrefer to relationships that are proximal to youth, indicated by enduring and consistent interactions, such as parents, siblings, and close friends. A cluster of strong ties in one developmental context, such as home, make up aCore; youth can have a core in each developmental context.
Example of a core within a web:
Weak ties refer to the more peripheral individuals who are connected to youth through a core individual, indicated by sporadic interactions that may not endure over time, such as neighbors and friends of friends; weak ties have the potential to turn into strong ties but serve as important extensions of the core individuals networks. Anchors refer to relationships that are similar to how mentors are defined, indicated by comprehensive social support; an anchor is often someone who a young person feels sees them, believes in them, pushes them, and unconditionally has their back. Anyone can be an anchor and ideally youth have one in every context.