Referring a young person for volunteer mentoring

For children aged 7-11

We can support children if they are facing at least two of the following challenges: ​

• Displaying signs of anti–social behaviour. To include at risk of offending​
• Disengaged or at risk of exclusion from education​
• Needing support in relation to issues of cultural isolation​
• In or leaving care​
• Children affected by drugs and/or alcohol directly or within their family​
• Children experiencing emotional problems such as bullying, bereavement, domestic abuse or family issues, including a culture of offending within their family
  

For young people aged 11-25

We can support children if they are facing at least two of the following challenges: ​

• Displaying signs of anti-social behaviour, including risk of offending ​
• Disengaged, excluded or at risk of exclusion from education OR not in employment or training ​
• In or leaving care ​
• Experiencing significant challenges out of school – including factors such as a lack of role models, family breakdown, bereavement, isolation and historic domestic violence, parent or family member in prison

Before you make a referral you must check that the young person meets our referral criteria. You must also have had a conversation with the young person and their family, explained who we are, what mentoring involves, and checked that they’re keen to take part.

For young people aged 7-11, we have spaces for mentoring September – July and then again January – December. This gives options to include support for year 6 children with continued support in terms 1 and 2 at secondary school.

Contact humphrey.pain@mentoringplus.net for more information about when we are open for referrals.

Because we have only limited capacity and we know demand for mentoring is very high, we have to choose young people as fairly as possible.

This process will also give us better information about how big the total demand for volunteer mentoring actually is. This may help us attract more charity funding to increase volunteer mentoring capacity in future.

As long as we receive an application, there is an equal chance for that young person to be selected in the ballot. We need to ask referrers to make sure that they don’t overlook any young people who might benefit, being inclusive to all backgrounds, heritage and different types of need.

Over the last few years we’ve supported a greater proportion of BAME young people than are represented in our community as a whole. We’re not a specialist service for supporting young people with disabilities, but if an individual can fully benefit from mentoring without significant extra resources needed, we will work hard to ensure they can be included if possible. Many of our young people are supported with learning and other difficulties such as dyslexia, ADHD etc.

We usually receive fewer referrals for girls than boys. We continue to ask referrers to be aware of young people who may have significant challenges but present them in different ways, such as less vocally, so that their needs are not overlooked.

Like all services, we are limited by budget as to how many people we can support. We have to ensure our practitioners have a caseload they can safely look after – even though the mentoring is done by volunteers, our professionals have to train and support them. A lot of practitioners’ work involves responding to safeguarding concerns and working with schools, families and other agencies to provide joined-up care and make sure the voice of the young person and family is heard.

If you’d like to see more capacity in services like ours, please help us spread the word about how important they are, influence decision-makers like councillors and MPs, and help raise funds for them. Please contact us if you’d like to help.