As part of our mentoring theme in September, Levelling the Playing Field spoke to Jeni Bennett, Mentor Project Manager at our specialist partners Sport 4 Life in Birmingham.
Izzy and Hannah from Sport 4 Life completed Levelling the Playing Field’s mentoring training, and although Izzy has moved on from the organisation, Hannah remains as one of five mentors managed by Jeni (pictured left).
Jeni, what did your trainee mentors learn from the LtPF qualification?
One of the main things was not to give the solution to the young person. As I was observing, there was a tendency to want to give them the answers. Guiding them towards figuring it out for themselves empowering that young person to move on independently.
Each session is to empower them with a new skill, insight or behaviour and develop their motivation or self-esteem etc. I could see they were developing that each time I dropped in to offer feedback.
So the key is, stop giving them everything, allow them time to talk, don’t fill the space when they’re thinking, give them the chance to think and feed back to you.
What has it enabled Hannah to do?
Hannah is a mentor working with 11-29-year-olds, including pupils who are removed from the education environment and are often referred by a family support worker, social worker, police or parents. She also works with unemployed adults at job centres in Handsworth and Newtown.
What are your own responsibilities at Sport 4 Life?
I manage five full-time mentors, oversee our career advisors and 10 youth engagement officers who work across schools and with adults up to age 29 and oversee various mentoring-related projects. We engaged over 500 young people engaging in mentoring in 2021-22.
Our youth engagement officers work with the Step Together project in conjunction with the Violence Reduction Partnership, making sure young people get into and out of school safely. This helps to de-escalate knife crime and other child criminal exploitation. Our mentors work within the schools which are on the routes we chaperone.
Another project is the emotional wellbeing project with Sandwell Council of Voluntary Organisations (SCVO). We work in schools to help mentor young people going through emotional and mental health difficulties.
A third project, in partnership with the National Careers Service, is employability mentoring with young people or adults. Unlike emotional wellbeing or crime reduction, this has a much quicker turnaround. It includes CV workshops, mock interviews, job applications; giving mentees the right skills and tools, and supporting them within the first couple of months once they enter the work environment.
What advice can you give to smaller organisations within the LtPF network on setting up mentoring programmes?
You need one-to-one time to really build that relationship with each young person. If you are balancing it with the sport and physical activity aspect then you need to allocate proper staff time into it. There are no half measures.
Sport 4 Life has a history of mentoring its young people, we have an infrastructure, curriculum and resources the mentor can pick from, depending on the needs of each young person. We have all that infrastructure which we very much stick to, because it works.
We have several surveys in order to make an intake assessment and get a clear picture of their element of disengagement: are they from a single-parent family, do they get free school meals, is there gang affiliation, domestic violence or mental health issues? Or is it just about improving employability? We have structures to gather all that information and decide how they need us to help.
While you’re building that rapport, you assess what they need - motivation, behaviour, self-esteem, communication or teamwork. What do they need support with in order to develop?
They might just need support ahead of a job interview. In some cases, we will literally buy them a suit, do a mock interview and get them a bus ticket.
Or their needs could be more long-term; developing positive self-esteem, tackling prior mental health issues or if they are ex-offenders. A journey to self-esteem, self-discovery and empowerment that can take up to a year. If you’re a ‘one-man band’ organisation you won’t necessarily have all of those resources at hand.
How would an organisation start to build that infrastructure?
You might start with a drop-in hour or offer a window for a 15-minute conversation about how they’re feeling, how’s school or whether there been any issues.
As an organisation focusing on employment, we start with some simple questions: what do they want to do when they’re older? We ask, ‘Where do you want to be in the next five years?’ That can be difficult for young people in certain situations.
We get a bit of paper and write it all down. What sort of job would you like? What do you like doing at school? Do you want to learn to drive? How are you going to do that? Where do you want to go on holiday? Do you want to own a pet? Do you want to live locally, or even leave the country?
It’s all really basic information but it encourages them to dream big. It can really help trigger a more positive mindset. We can’t help everybody but talking can really spark and empower a young person to find their own destination. Often the best way to support them is to signpost them elsewhere.
What soft skills does a mentor need to be successful?
You must be reliable, consistent and trustworthy – that is so important. A young person will pin you down and understand where you’re coming from within the first few moments of meeting you. They are very clued in.
They also need to know, not just that you care, but that you care about them – but that there will come a point where the mentoring will end but you’ll still be there for any ad-hoc support.
It’s knowing how to have those conversations, being confident in yourself and building that relationship, but always making sure it’s professional.
To read more about our specialist partners Sport 4 Life, click here or follow them on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.