About this service
Long-term mentoring for children and young adults who have experienced childhood trauma and disrupted attachments, providing access to new experiences and opportunities. We match children and young adults with volunteer mentors who, through quality friendship, give young people access to new opportunities, helping to build their self confidence and develop the resilience needed to manage adversity now and in the future. Since having a Friendship Works Mentor, 80% of young people we support said they felt happier and 76% of care experienced young adults felt more positive about their future.
More Information
Our model of mentoring aims to build a positive friendship between a young person and their mentor and has been proven to support the development of physical and emotional well being and resilience building.
For a young person to build effective and supportive relationships, it is important that contact is both frequent and long term. Research has shown that for young people, the most significant impact of a mentoring relationship occurs after 12 months. Therefore, we ask our volunteers to commit to meeting their young mentee on three weekends out of four, for at least two years.
The friendship is led by the needs and wants of the young person rather than by any externally set targets. In this way the young person is accepted for who they are, and within the safety of this knowledge can grow in confidence and feel safe enough look to their mentor for guidance and emotional support.
All our mentoring matches receive on-going support and supervision from our professional casework team, who are experienced in social care, education, child and adult mental health and youth offending.
To apply to be a mentor, please use a link to sign up for one of our short (45 minute) online information sessions. You can do this by clicking below where you will find the upcoming sessions:
Volunteer to mentor a child
Volunteer to mentor a care experienced young adult
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