6 September 2010

Communicating Youth Justice Award 2010

The YJB is inviting entries to this year’s Communicating Youth Justice Award, showcasing some of the most creative and exciting work done every day in the youth justice system.

All news and press releases

23-24 November 2010

Annual Youth Justice Convention 2010

The Annual Youth Justice Convention is the leading policy and networking event for all those committed to tackling youth crime.

All events

|What is RSS?

Prevention

Mentoring principles

Principles of mentoring

Mentoring starts from the philosophy that young people are their own experts.
Mentoring starts with the young person’s agenda and not with the schedule of outcomes and outputs, funding requirements or statutory goals that workers may have.
Young people and mentors deal with the personal issues of young people as the young person sees them – dealing with concerns that may appear to be on the periphery, but often have an impact on young people’s truanting, exclusion, anti-social behaviour and lack of achievement. Common issues might include anger management, relationship issues, budgeting, independent living, literacy and numeracy and communication skills.
Mentoring is ideally voluntary for both parties, but is structured within boundaries concerning confidentiality, child protection and health and safety.

Principles for mentoring

Mentoring must be built on trust, a commitment to confidentiality and equality between mentor and mentee.
Relationships must be structured, with clear objectives identified at the outset.
There must be clear ground rules about how offending by the young person while on the programme will be responded to. The role of a mentor is to enable their mentee to identify their goals on an academic, vocational or social level and to design a realistic action plan to achieve these goals.