Youth 4 Youth

BASIC INFORMATION

Case study date: October 2007

Local authority in which project based: Somerset County Council

Date started: 2002

Type of organisation: Voluntary youth organisation

Brief description

Established in 1997, the Somerset Youth Volunteering Network (SYVN) is a charity based in Glastonbury. Run with young people, it aims to support young people in Somerset who want to get involved in volunteering, community action and citizenship. The network supports over 600 young people a year through a variety of projects, including Millennium Volunteers, an intergenerational allotment project called Dig, INVOLVE - a project providing signposting to volunteering opportunities, and Youth 4 Youth.

Youth 4 Youth (Y4Y) is a peer to peer mentoring programme for young people aged 14 to 25. It has been running since 2002 and provides young people with accredited training and support to mentor other young people across Somerset. Mentors provide help and encouragement in a non judgemental way by providing a listening ear, signposting to specialist support, and supporting young people with problems ranging from bullying to time management. They mentor face to face, either in groups or individually within their youth group, school or college. Y4Y also helps other organisations and projects to set up and run mentoring programmes.

Collaboration

Y4Y is delivered through 12 schools, colleges, youth and community groups across Somerset. It also works with primary care trusts and agencies supporting young people with mental health and substance misuse issues.

Funding

The project is funded until April 2008 through the Cabinet Office’s Goldstar programme which promotes good practice for volunteers from socially excluded groups.

Staffing

There is a full-time peer mentoring coordinator based at SYVN plus 12 Y4Y link officers based at the 12 host organisations.

NATURE OF PROVISION

Which groups of young people does the project work with?

Since the programme began, Y4Y has worked with over 1,000 mentors. At any one time, there will be around 200 active mentors aged between 14 and 25. There are 212 in the current cohort, 155 of whom are female. Many are attracted to mentoring because they themselves have experienced problems at some point in their lives.

Mentees are aged eleven upwards.

How was the need for the project identified?

A small scale mentoring project was originally set up in response to a need identified by SYVN. The project was able to expand when it attracted Goldstar funding.

How do young people become involved? what, if any, commitment do you ask for?

Each school, college, community or youth group that hosts a mentoring service has a designated Y4Y link worker whose role includes identifying potential mentors and mentees. It is Y4Y’s policy to accept every young person who wants to be a mentor on the induction training. Once completed, if any young person is felt not to be suited to the mentoring role, Y4Y works with their link worker to identify other volunteering opportunities within SYVN more suited to their needs.

Y4Y holds an annual peer mentoring forum for young people who are already involved in mentoring or would like to become involved. This networking event allows mentors to share ideas about mentoring with other young people in the county and enables them to find out more information about the support services and organisations available, to enhance their knowledge within their mentoring role. In addition, Y4Y attends countywide community events, freshers’ fairs, careers’ fairs and agricultural shows to raise the profile of Y4Y, SYVN, youth volunteering generally and to attract new volunteers.

What are the main approaches used and activities offered?

Y4Y has two main approaches:

supporting young people to become mentors through the provision of training, support and recognition for their efforts;
supporting organisations such as schools and youth groups to set up and deliver a mentoring service.

The main vehicle for supporting young people to become mentors is the Y4Y training programme. Designed with the input of existing mentors, the programme aims to help potential mentors understand the principles of mentoring through interactive and fun activities such as role play, drama and video making. Supplemented by a mentor handbook, each of its four levels is delivered in three hour sessions, with flexibility to fit around a young person’s commitments:

Bronze – beginners’ level covering topics such as mentoring skills, communication, boundaries and child protection;
Silver – intermediate level developing skills and knowledge to manage an effective mentoring relationship. Topics include setting targets, recognising cultural diversity, and giving feedback to mentees;
Gold – covers issues such as bullying, eating disorders, and drugs and alcohol awareness together with ways that mentors can support young people who are experiencing these difficulties;
Platinum – training for mentors who wish to assist in the delivery of the bronze level training.

In order to complete a level, young people also have to undertake a certain number of hours mentoring, evidenced through the completion of session sheets. This evidence works towards each level in turn. All mentors are supervised by staff (Y4Y link workers) from the organisation in which they mentor and the peer mentoring coordinator. Mentors can also access help or advice through SYVN’s You(th) inc service, a telephone and email support service for volunteers delivered by young people.

As well as helping young people to become mentors, Y4Y also supports the schools, colleges and youth and community groups within which they mentor. Y4Y works with an organisation considering setting up a service to ensure that they have a basic management structure to support the delivery of a mentoring programme. Based on national benchmark standards, the required elements include having clear aims, induction and training, opportunities for mentor participation, referral processes, a review system to support and monitor mentors, and monitoring and evaluation processes. Once an organisation is running a mentoring scheme, they are able to join the Y4Y mentoring hub. This brings together network partners and host organisations to update them on issues affecting mentoring and befriending, such as CRB checks, data protection policies and funding. The hub also provides mentoring guidance and support, training events, and networking opportunities. It recently organised a training event publicising mentoring to the wider community, including information on leaflet and poster design, the use of plasma screen slides and websites.

Each organisation that runs a mentoring service has a designated Y4Y link worker who supports mentors and mentees and provides the link to the Y4Y regional coordinator. All link workers receive extensive training in the recruitment, management, support and retention of volunteers. They match mentor to mentee, follow the progression of the mentoring relationship and provide day to day support.

How are young people involved in shaping the project?

Individually, mentors are given the opportunity to feed back ideas and suggest improvements via their regular supervisory meeting with the project coordinator.

A number of youth led ‘mentor steering groups’ have also been set up where mentors steer the design, development and delivery of mentoring provision within their organisation as well as promoting and marketing the service. This ensures that the mentoring provision reflects the needs of young people involved in that service.

In terms of SYVN as a whole, 51% of the board of trustees must be under 25 at all times and all volunteers are able to attend board meetings.

How does the project respond to the needs of different young people, particularly the most marginalised?

The South West has the highest proportion of the UK’s population living in rural areas, with many young people experiencing social exclusion through rural isolation. To encourage these young people to become involved in volunteering, Y4Y has developed a volunteering roadshow which visits rural areas with information on the programme.

OUTCOMES OF WORK

How does the project contribute to the five Every Child Matters outcomes for young people?

Mentors make a positive contribution by engaging in decision making and supporting young people in the community. Through their roles, they learn strategies and skills for dealing with life changes and challenges.

What skills do young people gain through their involvement in the project?

Mentors develop confidence, communication and social skills. As much of the training is issue based, they also have increased knowledge of many of the problems faced by young people.

How are young people's progress and achievements measured and recorded?

Each mentor has their own file which records information on any contact with them as well as background information about them and what they hope to get from their mentoring experience. Young people receive SYVN accredited certificates after completing the different levels of the training programme. Many of the mentors aged 16+ are also involved in the Millennium Volunteers programme.

What has changed for other young people, organisations or the wider community as a result of the project?

Mentees have access to authoritative advice and guidance from a non judgemental peer and are often able to make more informed decisions as a result.

MEASURING EFFECTIVENESS

How is the project evaluated and by whom?

As part of its Goldstar role, Y4Y produces quarterly reports for the Cabinet Office, reporting on such areas as volunteer recruitment, progress made and evidence of work undertaken.

Young people evaluate the training programme and mentoring sessions and can also offer feedback in their supervision sessions.

What are the findings of any evaluations to date?

The project is an exemplar Goldstar project. The training programme is accredited with the national benchmark ‘Approved Provider Standard’ by the Mentoring and Befriending Foundation.

What changes/developments have occurred as a result of evaluation?

The mentor’s handbook has been redesigned and made more compact following feedback from young people that it was cumbersome and difficult to carry around.

What has worked well and why?

The informality and flexibility of the training programme means it is a successful way of engaging young people. The building of capacity within host organisations has also proved a successful area of practice.

What has been difficult and why?

Maintaining the quality of provision across 12 organisations has at times been difficult. Across the programme as a whole, Y4Y is now concentrating its effort on enhancing the quality of service available to the existing organisations, rather than working with new ones. It has achieved this mainly through the development of the Y4Y link officer role.

PARTNERSHIP AND STRATEGIC IMPACT

What other agencies do you work with?

Y4Y works in partnership with a variety of agencies which work with young people who may benefit from being matched with a mentor. Partnership working also serves to increase the range of opportunities on offer to current mentors. A recent example is a partnership being developed with a local primary care trust whereby mentors will be trained to signpost sexual health and screening services within local colleges. Similar partnership working has been set up with agencies dealing with substance misuse and mental health.

What does your project bring to partnership work?

Y4Y brings strong organisational structures and in depth knowledge on mentoring as well as brokering access to trained and enthusiastic young volunteers.

Has this partnership resulted in greater collaboration?

Partnership working has increased external partners’ understanding of the value of mentoring in supporting young people who may be experiencing difficulties.

How do you consider this project to be innovative?

Y4Y unique style and structure make it the first course in the country designed exclusively for mentors between the ages of 14 and 25.

How do you disseminate the learning from the project?

As a Goldstar and Approved Provider Standard project, Y4Y is keen to highlight and disseminate good practice on mentoring and regularly participates in national and regional conferences, events and workshops.

Y4Y is also in the process of making a DVD about the benefits of being a mentor which they hope to distribute nationwide.

Has the learning from this work influenced wider organisational/service strategies??

All young people who are involved in Y4Y are members of the wider SYVN. This means that other projects such as residentials and day trips run by the wider network are enhanced by the input of the Y4Y volunteers.

What plans do you have to sustain/develop this work?

Y4Y plans to set up a mentor steering group in each of the 12 mentoring organisations. A resource pack for link officers is also under development.

CONTACT DETAILS:

Laura Tufton, Youth 4 Youth Peer Mentoring Coordinator, Somerset Youth Volunteering Network, 9 Silver Street, Glastonbury BA6 8BS Tel: 01458 836130 Email: laura@somersetyouth.org.uk