Gracia McGrath - Chance UK

Question: What is Chance UK?

 

Gracia McGrath: It is a mentoring organisation for five to 11-year-old children with behavioural difficulties.

 

It matches children with adult volunteers who meet with them weekly for a year, to help them find ways to bring about changes in their behaviour and introduce them to new and positive influences in their life.

 

Question: When were you formed?

 

Gracia McGrath: Just over 10 years ago, in Islington, in 1995.

 

It was started with a policeman who saw children influenced in negative ways by their older siblings.

 

He thought it would be a good idea to influence children positively ensuring they weren’t influenced by the negative impacts that their siblings may have suffered.

 

Question: In which areas of the country are you working?

 

Gracia McGrath: We have programs in Hackney and Islington and are opening four new programs in Crawley, Liverpool, Inverness and Derry.

 

Question: How do young children get involved with your scheme?

 

Gracia McGrath: Children are often referred to us by the schools.

 

These include children who are being excluded on a regular basis, who do not appear to be functioning well in a school setting or are identified as needing extra support. 

 

A lot of the schools can identify this behaviour before it becomes too extreme leading to a child’s permanent exclusion.

 

Question: How many children go through the scheme every year?

 

Gracia McGrath: One hundred children go through the scheme in London; this will increase in the coming years.

 

Question: How do you find the mentors?

 

Gracia McGrath: We advertise in the press and have regular media campaigns to ensure we keep a high profile.  

 

People are more likely to volunteer for us if they know who we are.

 

It’s easier to recruit volunteers than it was three or four years ago as more people understand what mentoring actually means.

 

We also approach people directly targeting particular professions we are always looking for male mentors and mentors from black and minority ethnic communities so we target professions that have a high proportion of both.

 

We are also looking to work with more employee volunteering schemes.

 

Question: What sort of people become mentors?

 

Gracia McGrath: Very few of our volunteers have children and the biggest age group tends to be 25 to 35-year-olds; often they’re thinking about becoming a parent and considering whether they’re ready to change their careers and are suitable for the caring profession.  

 

Others were in similar situations or facing similar problems as children themselves and want to be able to help and give back the support they received.

 

Some feel they have had a very easy life and want to help those who haven’t, so really we have a full range of people.

 

Question: How are you funded?

 

Gracia McGrath: We get funding from the Cabinet office as part of the Gold Star programme as an exemplar of good practice in mentoring and befriending.

 

There are six of us across the UK. 

 

We also get a variety of funding through government funds that are administered locally such as Children’s Funds, drug and alcohol action teams, neighbourhood renewal funds, etc. 

 

We also get money from Trust Funds, group fundraisers and individual donors.

 

Recently the income from individual donors has grown through our involvement with New Philanthropy Capital.

 

Question: The government has launched the social exclusion action plan. In your opinion has it gone far enough and does it address the important issues?

 

Gracia McGrath: We welcome this action plan.

 

The guidelines are well thought out and we agree with the policies they highlight which include early identification and prevention work with those most at risk.

 

A recent study of parents that abuse alcohol found that the children were four times more likely to be addicted to drink, drugs and gambling.

 

Early intervention with those children can stop this from happening.

 

The action plan suggests using assessment tools to aid early identification and from experience we can say how helpful this is.

 

Chance UK uses the Goodman’s Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) at the beginning and end of the programme.

 

The SDQ looks at how a child functions and enables us to identify the children that have behavioural difficulties.

 

It also means we can identify how far the child has developed during the course of the programme.

 

Question: How do you know that your programme makes a difference? 

 

Gracia McGrath: In 2005 we evaluated the starting and ending SDQ scores for all the children using our programmes 45% had no difficulties at the end of the program and 88% had made significant changes to their starting score.

 

Teachers also report that at the end of the programme 82 per cent are more participatory in class; 73 per cent have improved concentration and 64 per cent can mange their anger better.

 

It is sometimes hard for parents to accept that other people can make changes in their children when they were not able to do so.

 

So we work hard through our ParentPlus Programme to ensure that parents feel involved and see the benefits and in last years research 95 per cent of parents said that their relationship with their children had improved as a result of the programme.

 

This is very important as it is the parent that has to continue the work if the changes in the child’s behaviour are to be maintained. 

 

Question: Where to now for Chance UK?

 

Gracia McGrath: Well, obviously the establishment of new programmes across the UK is very exciting for us.

 

We know we have a programme that works and changes children’s futures and we want to make sure that more children have access to it.

 

We also have just started work on a longitudinal study which will be carried out by the Unit for School and Family Studies, Department of Psychology at Goldsmiths College.

 

This will include comparative data on the 100 children taking part in the programme this year with starting and ending SDQ’s and self-esteem measurements (which have been introduced this year); tracing 40 children who have graduated the programme in the last three years to see if changes have been maintained.

 

The study will also follow five children from matching, though the programme to graduation and debriefing.

 

Once we can prove how well prevention can work there will be no stopping us.