Mentoring Practitioner
3-5 days per week, permanent PAYE, some hybrid working and scope for flexible hours
From £12.75 per hour dependent upon experience, plus pension (FTE from £24,860)
Based Bath and working across Bath & NE Somerset
Deadline Mon 17 April 2023
Youth charity Mentoring Plus supports young people aged 5-25 across several projects, all with the aim of offering positive 1-1 mentoring and opportunities to help build confidence, self-esteem, engagement with education and emotional wellbeing. Demand for our services has never been higher, and due to staff promotion we currently have an opportunity to join our highly respected team of professional practitioners.
Our Practitioners are the professionals who make our work accessible and safe: receiving referrals, getting to know the young person, matching them with a mentor and supporting the relationship. You’ll be supervising the mentor, following up safeguarding concerns and representing the young person’s interests in multi-agency support processes.
This volunteer mentoring project offers 1-1 community-based mentoring to young people aged 11-25 facing significant challenges in education, at home, with peers or with mental wellbeing. Young people are matched with trained adult volunteers for weekly 1-1 mentoring sessions, usually outside school hours.
Young people are quick to appreciate that volunteers have chosen to spend time with them and don’t have a ‘script’, which helps quickly build trust and playful communication. With practitioner support our mentors show imagination, energy and insight and tell us how much knowledge they have gained, as well as the rewards of helping a child feel more confident and prepared for the future.
In this role you’ll need to build a rapport with families (though our support is focused on the child), schools and fellow professionals. You’ll be part of the team delivering mentor training periodically, and offering inspiring group activities in school holidays. You’ll be spending plenty of time mentees in assessment, often involving sport, art, cookery, wildlife, board games or whatever else they want to do!
It’s fast-moving, rewarding work where hearing a tough life story will be rapidly followed by a fun meetup with a young person. Practitioners experience the reward of both helping young people directly and enabling adult mentors to do the same.
Role profile
You’ll need at least 2 years’ experience in an equivalent role, which could be in the education, healthcare, social care, voluntary or similar sectors. You’ll need confidence in your own practice with young people needing extra support, but it’s vital you also enjoy supporting adults to reflect on theirs, building their knowledge and abilities.
Empathy and warmth are essential when working with young people and families, and so are clear, compassionate communication with fellow professionals and the ability to keep accurate records on our secure casework database. We serve a broad geographic area including rural communities, so a full driving licence, access to a well-maintained car and business insurance are essential for this role.
As you’d expect, we look after our professionals with regular management supervision and monthly clinical supervision. We offer regular training, practice sharing and a commitment to staff wellbeing and development. Our small and friendly team comprises like-minded individuals all motivated to help young people feel safe, feel heard and feel hopeful for the future. Some home-based working is possible (not 100%).
How to apply
If you fit this bill and want to make a real difference to young people struggling with tough challenges, we’d love to hear from you. Please download a job description and person specification here.
We operate Safer Recruitment guidelines for all staff so we’ll need you to complete and return this application form (submission details are included in the form).
We operate an anonymised shortlisting process to determine how well you meet the criteria in the role profile. Please be sure to make this explicit and do not assume we can infer this information e.g. from a previous job title or similar. We cannot accept a CV or an application in another format.
Deadline for applications: Mon 17 April 2023 at 11am. Interviews are planned for the week commencing Mon 24 April.