Nimal Jude, Head of Foundations’ new Practice Development Team, introduces the latest Practice Guide for local leaders. The Guide, commissioned by the Department for Education and produced by Foundations, draws on powerful new evidence from a systematic review, conducted by Liverpool John Moores University, about the benefits of mentoring and befriending for care-experienced children and young people.

We know that stable and supportive adult relationships make a critical difference to children and young people as they develop. However, care-experienced children and young people often miss the chance to form sustained bonds with adults and peers. Mentoring and befriending programmes that match these young people with trusted adults and peers are one way to help them to build consistent relationships, and to support them to grow in confidence, overcome challenges and realise their hopes for the future.

The latest Practice Guide on mentoring and befriending, produced by Foundations and commissioned by the Department for Education, provides important new evidence about the benefits that proven mentoring and befriending programmes can have for care-experienced children and young people. This matters because mentoring and befriending programmes are not offered consistently across the country, and the support that is offered has not always been thoroughly evaluated, so we don’t know enough about its impact. The Practice Guide’s most notable findings include:

• Strong evidence that proven mentoring and befriending programmes improve mental health and post-traumatic symptoms of children in residential, foster or kinship care who have been at risk of significant harm
• Good evidence that proven mentoring and befriending programmes offered to children and young people involved, or at risk of involvement, with the youth justice system, can reduce offending and the risk of offending
• Promising evidence that proven mentoring and befriending interventions can support the stability of foster and kinship care placements, and strengthen the prospects of children and young people reuniting with their families (in cases where parental rights have not been ended)

The evidence underpinning the Guide not only sheds light on the value of mentoring and befriending programmes in improving outcomes, it also brings together research on the views of children and young people about the design and delivery of mentoring and befriending support. The perspectives of children and young people in this research offer meaningful learning and insights, which the Practice Guide collects in a series of Key Principles designed to support effective mentoring and befriending programmes.

Children and young people expressed that it was important for their gender and ethnicity to be considered when they are matched with a mentor, and appreciated it when other factors, including their experience of care, were reflected in the support offered. It may not always be easy for local leaders to provide matched mentors, but, where possible, they should involve young people in the choice of mentor, diversify their pool of mentors, and consider using natural mentors drawn from the young person’s existing networks (where it’s safe to do so).

Above all, young people and their carers stressed the crucial importance of trust to successful mentoring. Listening, mutual respect, understanding, and consistency were identified as essential ingredients of a strong mentoring relationship. Echoing the conclusions of the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, the need for mentoring relationships to be genuinely caring, not transactional, came through strongly.

The Practice Guide flags challenges too, as well as underlining the demonstrable benefits of mentoring and befriending. Mentors reported that young people who have experienced loss or rejection in previous relationships with adults can find it most difficult to build a close relationship with a mentor. They suggest that these young people might benefit from beginning mentoring earlier in their lives, which also has the advantage of coming before a young person navigates increasingly complex issues.

A word about the evidence in the UK on mentoring and befriending. Much of the research that informs the new Practice Guide comes from programmes outside the UK, but the core values and principles are universal. Young people everywhere share common needs for support, guidance and positive relationships. They can benefit from the evidence-based approaches, as set out in this Guide.

We want local leaders to use the evidence in the Guide when they are commissioning programmes or reviewing and strengthening their existing offer, and to tailor their support to the local circumstances and characteristics of the children and young people they care for. Over the coming months, we will be working alongside partners – local leaders, funders and service deliverers – to support them to put the Guide’s recommendations into practice.

Ultimately, the Mentoring and Befriending Practice Guide demonstrates that meaningful connections with trusted peers and adults have the power to transform young people’s lives, and, collectively, we owe care experienced children and young people the opportunity to experience that.