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Youth Offending: Mentoring Interventions

Solving the problem

Youth Offending: Mentoring Interventions

Summary

A quarter of known offenders are aged 10-17 years. An unstable family life and educational problems are recognised risk factors. Mentoring schemes can provide an element of stability and support that is often lacking in the lives of these young people.
Many mentoring schemes are funded by the Youth Justice Board and are run by the Youth Offending Team or by other statutory and non-statutory agencies and organisations.
Mentoring schemes are a cost-effective way of reducing youth offending and give young people the opportunity to spend time with positive adult role models, to gain new skills, improve their self-confidence and become aware of alternatives to criminal activity.
Some mentoring schemes have seen a reduction in the level of youth offending and improvements in the young person’s behaviour.

Contents

Outline of the solution......

What worked where?......

What explains what works?......

Checklist......

Want to know more......

Contacts......

References......

Further Reading......

Mentoring schemes support and help young people to set and achieve goals, resist negative peer pressure, improve self-esteem and help them realise there are alternatives to offendingA close relationship with the YOT is essential in the success of independently run mentoring schemes / Outline of the solution
Home Office statistics on known offenders indicate that about a quarter of known offenders are aged 10-17 years. Acknowledged risk factors that have been shown to increase the likelihood of a young person offending include:
  • poor parental supervision
  • unstable family life with poor relationship with parents
  • early onset of aggressive and other problem behaviour
  • educational failure (beginning in primary school)
  • high level of school absence (through truancy or exclusion)
  • aggressive behaviour and bullying at school.
Addressing these factors at an early age has been shown to prevent some ‘at risk’ young people from entering a “life of crime”. One such intervention is mentoring.
Mentoring schemes may be particularly useful for working with socially excluded young people who are:
  • involved in anti-social or offending behaviour
  • excluded from school or regularly truanting
  • showing significant signs of educational failure
The schemes aim to support and help young people to set and achieve goals, resist negative peer pressure, improve self-esteem and help them realise there are alternatives to offending. Mentoring typically involves a volunteer who is not an authority figure in the young person’s life (ie not a police officer, teacher, parent, social worker etc.). Mentors are trained to develop a structured one-to-one relationship that works on the specific needs of the young person. They can provide practical help, emotional support and guidance to the young person, and become a positive role model. It has been shown that it is important that mentorsare non-judgemental. Mentoring has been shown to improve the young person’s confidence and help them to reach their goals.
The Youth Justice Board (YJB) has provided funding for 39 mentoring projects throughout the EnglandWales. Local Youth Offending Teams (YOT) run half of these schemes and the remainder are run independent of the YOT. However, a close relationship with the YOT is proving to be an essential element in the success of independently-run mentoring schemes, particularly with regard to recruiting appropriate young people.
Some projects have been more successful than others in recruiting volunteer mentors. Effective methods of mentor recruitment have included presentations to local voluntary and community groups, using the local media, and attaching information to pay slips for council employees. In addition, the YJB have financed national advertising aimed specifically at BME groups.
Mentors undertake a range of activities with the young people including help with education, careers advice, leisure activities, as well as advocacy and general support. The level of re-offending among offenders entering these projects between July and September 2000 is being monitored for 12-months and the results will be published in 2002.
Other funding sources have included the Home Office, the National Lottery, the Millennium Commission and voluntary and charitable organisations.
The YJB and Crime Concern have published comprehensive guidance notes on the setting up and implementation of mentoring projects.
Mentoring interventions are run by a variety of organisations and can be run as a single intervention, as part of a package of interventions, or as part of a statutory-agency programme / What worked where?
Mentoring interventions are run by a variety of organisations, including statutory, community and voluntary sectors organisations, eg Youth Offending Teams,Education Services and Crime Concern. These schemes can be:
  • single interventions: for example, the Chance mentoring project which targets children aged 5-11 years
  • part of a wider scheme: for example, the Dalston Youth Project which targeted young people aged 11-14 years, that also includes after-school sessions, a residential weekend and a parenting component
  • part of larger programmes: for example, the Youth Offending Teams (YOT) and Youth Inclusion Projects (YIP)
  • used specifically in schools as either educational or social-behavioural interventions or both.
Two examples of a YJB funded schemes include:
  • The Wiltshire Mentoring project, which is managed by the county’s YOT and has an annual target of reducing offending rates among 30 young people by 50%. A further target is to increase the number of participants in education, training or work by 70%. By March 2001, the scheme had 20 active pairings and 17 of these young people had not been involved in criminal activity since being assigned to their mentor.
  • The Kirklees Mentoring project involves early intervention with young people as well as trying to help young offenders change their lives. Young people are referred from a variety of sources including, Family Resource Project, Children and Families Unit, other Social Services teams, as well as the YOT and Bail Support. The YOT provide the mentor training and supervision. Although, the Home Office reports low levels of offending by the young people during a 4-month evaluation period, they also point out that few of the mentees at that time were persistent offenders.
The Chance project was a community-based programme set up in 1996 and funded through the Home Office Programme Development Unit, the National Lottery and the Cass Foundation. This project targeted children aged 5-11 years, who had behaviour problems. Most came from deprived areas and exhibited several at risk factors, half were from BME groups, 97% were male and half had already been excluded from school at least once. The project planned to support these children and direct them away from behaviours that could lead to school exclusion, offending and other anti-social behaviour. An evaluation reported that of the 71 young people entering the project, almost half (45%) ‘graduated’.
The Dalston Youth Project II was funded by the Home Office Programme Development Unit and targeted young people aged 11-14 years who were considered to be at risk of being excluded from school, and, as such, at risk of offending. The project planned to support young people and direct them towards a socially acceptable and safer lifestyle. Its aims were to improve basic educational and social skills, reduce conflict with adults and reduce ‘at risk’ behaviours and offending rates among the young people entering the project. An evaluation concluded that it had some success, despite working with some very challenging 11-14 year olds. A few of the young people were “turned around” during the course of the project though overall the effects on offending were somewhat disappointing.
Other examples of mentoring schemes include:
  • Mentoring Plus: a community based mentoring and education project for youths aged 15-19 years who have been excluded from school or are already young offenders. These schemes each work with 30–60 young people per year and provide a structured and intensive programme of residential courses, one-to-one mentoring and an education/training package.
  • Lifting the exclusion zone, Nottingham: this partnership project, aims to reduce the risk of school exclusion among Afro-Caribbean and dual heritage young people. Mentors are from the BME group Evaluation of the 1997/98 school year reported a 38% drop in fixed term exclusions among young people attending the project.
  • Breaking the cycle: this project works with disaffected youths aged 15-19 years who are at risk, this includes young offenders, care-leavers, and those excluded from school.

Key success factors include: good working partnerships, targeting the ‘right’ young people, recruiting and training suitable volunteer mentors, and ultimately ensuring good mentor/young person pairings. / What explains what works?
Mentoring schemes may be effective in deterring some young people from offending or re-offending by providing a consistent relationship with an adult who can introduce an element of stability and support which is often lacking in the lives of these young people. Young people participating in mentoring schemes have the opportunity to spend time with positive adult role models, gain new skills, improve their self-confidence and become aware of alternatives to criminal activity. Indications from the evaluations of existing mentoring projects suggest there have been successes, the key contributing success factors being:
  • Involvement of the YOT, even for schemes that are not run directly by the YOT, and a sound working partnership with other statutory and non-statutory agencies are an essential component to ensure the ‘right’ young people are referred and the work is supported
  • Clearly defining the criteria for inclusion and then identifying and targeting the young people who will most benefit from a mentor
  • Recruiting suitable volunteer mentors from a wide range of backgrounds and providing comprehensive, and on-going, training and support for the volunteer mentors who undertake the work with, often, very challenging young people
  • Ensuring suitable mentor/young person matches. The success of any mentoring scheme is essentially based on the pairing of the mentor and young person, which can be based on personalities, gender, ethnicity, interests, and the young person’s needs or goals. While this may be constrained by the availability of mentors, to be effective the pairing should be such that a trusting relationship can be developed.
The research is also indicating that mentoring schemes may be more effective when they are part of a package of interventions, for example:
  • The Chance project introduced parenting support and child/peers schemes in the 2nd and 3rd years of the project, and both schemes were successful
  • The Dalston project concluded more intensive or longer-lasting interventions may be needed for maximum impact

Checklist
Before deciding if a Mentoring intervention would be suitable for addressing the problem of youths offending or at risk of offending in your area, it is important that you identify the nature of the problem. To help you decide whether it is your best option, try asking yourselves the following questions:
  • What is known about the scale and nature of youth offending in your area?
  • What information is provided in the local audit of crime and disorder (available from your Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership or Community Safety Partnership)?
  • What information is available from the local police? For example, recorded crime data for youth offending and police callouts to youths causing a nuisance in your target areas
  • What information is contained in the local Youth Offending Team’s annual review?
  • Are “risk factors” for youth offending present in the area, particularly those set out earlier?
  • Are there any local mentoring schemes already being run?
  • Have you contacted other agencies for support and guidance in running this type of intervention? For example:
  • Youth Justice Board
  • Youth Offending Team (YOT)
  • Probation
  • Education services & Schools
  • Employment & Careers Service
  • Voluntary sector organisations, eg Crime Concern
  • Planning for Action
  • Is the scheme to be ‘stand alone’ intervention or part of a package?
  • What funding opportunities are there?
  • Who will be your target group, young offenders, young people at risk, or both? What are the characteristics of the target group in terms of age, sex, ethnicity, family background etc?
  • Who will implement the scheme? How will it be staffed?
  • Who will co-ordinate, recruit, train and manage the mentors?
  • What training facilities are already available that you could ‘tap into’?
  • How will you recruit appropriate young people into the scheme? Who will be able to refer a young person to the scheme?
  • What criteria will you use to match mentors and young people?
  • What facilities can be provided for the mentor to work with the young person?
  • Is there a suitable location where the scheme can be based?
  • What can you learn from elsewhere about what works in all of this?
  • The agencies involved in partnership will need to know how well an operation has performed and how cost-effective it has been.
  • Have you drawn-up clearly defined and measurable objectives?
  • Has a system been put in place to monitor the effectiveness of your approach?

Want to know more
Contacts
Name / Telephone number / Email address
Mentoring Plus Team, Crime Concern / 020 7820 6000 /
,
Youth Justice Board / 020 7271 3033 /
National Mentoring Network / 0161 787 8600
The Princes Trust / 020 7543 1231
References
St James-Robert, I., Samlal Singh, C. (2001) Can mentors help primary school children with behaviour problems? Home Office Research Study 233. London: Home Office
Tarling, R., Burrows, J., and Clarke, A. (2001) Dalston Youth Project part II (11-14): an evaluation. Home Office Research Study 232. London: Home Office
Youth Justice Board/Crime Concern (2000) Mentoring for young people at risk and young offenders. London: YJB
Youth Justice Board (2001) The Preliminary report on the operation of the new youth justice system. London: YJB
Further Reading
Buist, M (2000) Young people’s views of befriending (mentoring) scheme delivered by Edinburgh Volunteer Tutors Organisation. Edinburgh: Edinburgh VTO
Clarke, A., and Tarling, R (1998) Dalston Youth Project Part B: An Evaluation, Interim Report. London: Home Office
Hamilton, S.F., and Darling, N. (1989) ‘Mentors in adolescents lives’ in K. Hurrelmann and U Engle (Eds.) The Social world of adolescents. New York: de Gruyter.
McIntyre, D., Hagger, H., and Wilkin, M. (1993) Mentoring: perspectives on school-based teacher education.London: Kogan Page.
Mentoring News (2000) The newsletter of the National Mentoring Network, Manchester
National Mentoring Partnership (USA)
Philip, K., and Hendry, L.B. (1996) Young people and mentoring – towards a typology? Journal of Adolescence, 19, 189-201
Philip, K., and Hendry, L.B. (2000) Making sense of mentoring or mentoring making sense? Reflections on the mentoring process by adult mentors with young people. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 10, 211-223.
Selekman MD (1997) Solution-focused therapy with children. London: The Guilford Press.
St James-Robert, I., Samlal Singh, C. (1998). Evaluation of Project CHANCE Islington: Phase 1 Report. London: Home Office

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