Our More Than Mentors programmes takes an Early Action approach aimed at preventing future mental health need for young people through an innovative model of peer mentoring. By supporting students who present early, we aspire to address early markers for mental health needs such as depression, stress and anxieties, and reduce associated symptoms. Through peer mentoring we are looking to build young people’s emotional resilience and self-confidence, improve their attendance and attainment at school and offer a preventative approach to mental health and emotional distress within the borough.

This programme is currently running in the London Boroughs of Barking & Dagenham and Haringey. In Barking & Dagenham the project is funded by the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) & the Education Service and in Haringey by the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) through the Trailblazer Programme. It is delivered with psychology support from the East London Foundation Trust and evaluation by the Anna Freud Centre (EBPU).

What does More Than Mentors offer?

For the Mentors – young people aged 11 to 20 years are offered 2day/5 session training as a peer mentor with the opportunity of gaining accredited National Open College Network (NOCN) Level 2 Award in Peer Mentoring, trained mentors have opportunity to apply their mentoring skills, receive specialist supervision throughout the programme and further training and development of leaderships skills.

For the Mentees – young people aged 11 to 16 years are able to meet with a mentor in a safe and supported setting for up to 10 sessions to build on their strengths and develop goals for their future.

For the Schools and Community Groups – As well as supporting your work with young people, the More Than Mentors team provide a Training the Trainers programme so that More than Mentors is sustainable locally.

The More than Mentors programme has trained 237 mentors so far and 1-1 mentoring has been underway since September 2016. The early evaluation findings are promising and the full evaluation report will be available in Summer 2019.