Peter Collins - Mentoring and Befriending Foundation

ePolitix.com speaks to the Mentoring and Befriending Foundation about the impact of mentoring and befriending and work that they are undertaking to engage MPs and government officials.

To read more about mentoring and befriending relationships and social cohesion, please click here.

Question: Why do you believe that mentoring and befriending is on the political radar at the moment?

Peter Collins: It has a lot to do with current social and economic policy and recognition by various government departments that individuals are not engaging with services that could assist them. There is a need to put in place support to enable people to access those services effectively – mentors and befrienders can provide that link. I think it also has a lot to do with the view that individuals need to be engaged in their community by people who live in the community.

There are a great opportunities for mentors and befrienders to re-engage people - supporting others who lack social skills and confidence to progress. Mentoring and befriending are recognised interventions to help people back into social networks and assist them in becoming economically active.

There is a lot of anecdotal information out there that does gives ministers and officials comfort that mentoring and befriending can really engage people and give them support in accessing services that are already there on the ground.

Question:  Mentoring and befriending schemes are often aimed at vulnerable adults and children. How specifically can these schemes support the vulnerable people in the society?

Peter Collins: By providing a role model someone, for example, who has learnt from similar life experiences and as a result is wiser – who has empathy and can provide support to vulnerable adults and children to enable them to move forward through a difficult time. It is this support and advice that can make the difference. 

The relationships can be very effective – made stronger with the recognition that the mentor or befriender is simply giving their time because they want to help, not a paid professional or representing authority. The mentor or befriender can give that extra time, that objective support and advice - can practically, for example, accompany someone to an interview, a college assessment or access to other personal support when the individual alone would not have the confidence to take such a step.

Question: Is there any recent evidence/research to support this?

Peter Collins: There are pieces of research out there; The Joseph Rowntree Foundation looked at mentoring young people in care.

The report highlighted the positive role of the volunteer as an accessible, attentive partner making a valuable contribution to supporting individuals and fitting in well alongside professionals.

The Youth Justice Board research found that mentors helped with issues of employment and training and also contributed to the strengthening of family relationships. The Crime Concern research on their Mentoring Plus project some years ago highlighted the value of mentoring relationships in supporting young people into employment and training.

Whilst there are some pieces of research we have no longitudinal research that really offers evidence over a period of time.

The impact of the mentor or befriender is sometimes difficult to capture – when my team run events across the country we ask projects to source people who have benefited from mentoring and befriending.  We do not pre-select those that speak and when they do speak they talk passionately about their experiences.

So we do know that the evidence is out there. The challenge for the sector is to start looking at how we do capture and brigade all that information and present it back to government. And so there is clearly a need for research, but there is also a need to capture the existing evidence in a way that demonstrates the real value.

Question: Recent reports have suggested that a large percentage of older people may be suffering from social exclusion, how can mentoring and befriending projects help in this situation?

Peter Collins: Older people are often engaged in mentoring – particularly in school based programmes. In my experience intergenerational mentoring provides the older person with a new focus and helps to address feelings of isolation. There is also evidence available that engagement in mentoring and other voluntary activities has a positive impact on physical and mental health.

Retired people do sometimes feel that their contribution to society, their economic contribution, is no longer required. They feel somehow that they are not as useful a member of society - mentoring can help address this by ensuring that their expertise and life skills are passed on to others.

Recently, I attended a meeting at the House of Commons where four ministers took time out of their schedule to look at the issue of intergenerational activity and ways of encouraging more engagement between young people and older people to help break down barriers.  There is clearly a growing interest in this area of work and the support offered by mentoring and befriending projects to volunteers does provide a suitable point of entry into volunteering for older people.

Question: Last year the govt published the strategy paper ‘aiming high for young people’. Mentors are mentioned in this to support the transition, what is your position on this?

Peter Collins: It is important to note that mentoring and befriending projects should be part of an overall package of support - one element of provision - part of a wider plan to support an individual. So the mentoring support that one could consider in a 10-year strategy may come from paid mentors or volunteer mentors – more a commitment to individualised support to address often unique issues.

There are, for example, teenage-parent projects where typically a teenage parent might be very isolated and have no confidence whatsoever in accessing services. In such cases mentoring plays a critical role in helping young people to manage their immediate circumstances, access what is in offer to them from others and provide personal support for progression.

We welcome the strategy paper and we have been working with the Department to examine the support structures and capacity building measures that will be needed to ensure that mentoring is used widely and effectively.

Question: The Reach report has also highlighted the use of mentors as positive black male role models, what are your views on this and what work are you as the Foundation doing with the Reach team to make this a reality?

Peter Collins: The MBF does welcome the recommendations of the Reach report and we have indeed explored the ways in which we can offer support through training, encouraging projects to operate to standards, provide networking opportunities to share good practice.

There is a need to develop the infrastructure further to ensure that there are effective programmes available where needed. The infrastructure is critical in ensuring that effective matching takes place that CRB checks are processed, that support is offered on an ongoing basis to mentor and mentee. One of the ways we can to do this is to raise awareness with commissioners at local level and to encourage investment in that local provision. The MBF will be hosting promotional events during the year ahead.  

Question: Baroness Neuberger has recently spoken out about reducing the amount of bureaucracy voluntary projects face to increase levels of volunteering; do you think there should be less mandatory checks on volunteers?

Peter Collins: It is an interesting point of debate. It is essential that we have stringent checks when it comes to working with vulnerable adults and young people. However, volunteers are often put off by the processes and procedures of checking. The new safeguarding arrangements are also adding to the concerns over the bureaucracy – it is a question of balance.

Where children and vulnerable adults is the focus of the volunteering then clearly mandatory checks should take place. In other cases, it may be more sensible to apply a common sense approach. This could include a formalised selection process that demonstrated a rigour in assessing prospective volunteers - a model that recognises the projects duty of care to individuals who they will be supporting.

Question: The Foundation’s annual conference was held in May, what was the focus this year?

Peter Collins: Over 300 delegates networked and attended a wide range of open-forum workshops exploring a range of issues including safe practice, mentoring Looked After Children, volunteers and the law and peer mentoring in educational settings.

A major new report illustrating how mentoring and befriending relationships are playing a major role in bringing about social cohesion and reducing tension among communities was also launched.
 
Phil Hope MP was the keynote speaker and started his presentation by stressing to delegates the profound and integral role they play within the third sector and in what the government is ultimately trying to achieve in terms of social inclusion, community cohesion, breaking down barriers, enhancing education and re-connecting individuals back to the community. 

Significantly he also reinforced the fact that: "Every single government department is using mentoring in some way to achieve their objectives".

"The professional one-to-one support is extraordinarily effective… the relationship between a mentor and a mentee is quite unique and the voluntary aspect is a very important part of the process. Voluntary mentors impact on people in a special way…creating a unique bond of trust that’s often harder for paid professionals to achieve"

Question: Do you have any final comments for ePolitix.com readers?

Peter Collins: We have so many government documents now that make reference to mentoring - we have to ensure that we can supply the mentors to provide the service to those young people and adults who need the support. So there are challenges of supply and demand we need to address.

Secondly we need to have the infrastructure on the ground so that people can be managed effectively to provide the right sort of mentoring and befriending for the mentee or befriended.