Children & Family Action | Registered Charity No. 1070062 Last page update 3 October 2011
“Life begins at nine when I got my first mentor.” Louis, 9
Children and Family Action would like to thank the Henry Smith Charity for their generous grant funding. This will allow us to continue our mentoring work in Holderness for a further three years. (October 2011 to September 2014)
How our mentoring programme works
The children with whom we work are referred to us mainly by teachers. If a child meets our selection criteria, we visit the family to discuss the mentoring. Only if there is sufficient motivation to participate on the part of all concerned do we accept a child on to our programme.
Each child is carefully matched with a volunteer adult mentor. One of our programme managers briefs the child, the family and the mentor about all the relevant issues. A meeting to introduce the mentor and the child takes place, after which the mentoring begins.
The mentor and child meet every week for 2-4 hours for a year. For the first three months, the mentor builds a trusting relationship with the child. During the next nine months, the child works towards achieving realistic goals, which have been agreed at a meeting between mentor, child, parent/s and programme manager, after the three-month phase. The mentor also has monthly meetings with the programme manager for supervision and support.
Interested in volunteering? click here!
Our Aim
Our mission is to identify primary school children with behavioural difficulties who are at risk of developing anti-social or criminal offending behaviour in the future, and to offer them one-to-one mentoring with a carefully screened, trained and supervised adult volunteer. We also offer support to the children’s parents and/or carers.
Our objectives are to introduce more stability into the children’s lives; to reduce the isolation they and their families may be experiencing; to directly address the difficulties experienced by each child; to support the children as they find the motivation and life skills they need to move forward; to channel their disruptive energy into projects that encourage a sense of personal achievement; to engender in them a sense of self-worth.
We follow all appropriate child protection guidelines and practices, promote equality of opportunity, and have non-discriminatory policies and practices.
Independent evaluations show that the individually tailored, one-to-one mentoring we offer can have a positive long-term effect on a child’s behaviour.
THe latest evaluation reports that 86% of the children who complete a year long programme in London in 2005 showed an improvement in their behaviour .
