Mentoring is proven to be one of the least intrusive ways of helping people, both young and old. Mentors don’t dig into your past or analyse your behaviour, mentoring is about talking, and sharing your dreams, concerns, worries and questions with someone who has been through similar experiences to you and who has come out the other side. Our Mentors are a bit like a big brother or sister, they speak your language and understand the challenges that you are facing. Often just talking through your feelings and week will make you feel much better and help you to see clearer.

Counsellors and therapists will try to address a behaviour or issue resulting from your past or a particular event, or series of events. A Mentor will look at how you are today and help you look to the future with optimism, clarity and, hopefully, excitement! And unlike a tutor they will not try to help you with your school subjects….but if you are concerned about that, of course you can talk to them about that too!

In short, anything!! Your Mentor is like an older best friend or sibling. They clearly remember all the difficulties and challenges that you are going through as though they were yesterday, but now they are thriving so will be able to guide you on how they got through it all!

Please remember that all conversations are confidential so you really can talk about anything. However, if there is something that you say that worries a Mentor or they don’t know the answer to, they may ask a fully qualified expert for an opinion. We hope that’s ok?

The best way of helping to choose your Mentor is by being as open and honest with us during our initial chat. The more information we have from you and the clearer the sort of person you think you would like to have as a Mentor, the better the choice will be!

In most instances a parent or guardian will pay for the Mentoring. We will keep them updated on how many sessions you have and if you want more you must discuss this with them.

Your first couple of mentoring sessions will be an opportunity for you and the Mentor to get to know each other. Trust and rapport will build with the Mentor and as time passes, you will feel more and more comfortable with them, conversations will be more free flowing over time, and you will start to feel you can get advice on anything! Clouds will clear and you will start to focus on the future with increased optimism.

Mentoring is designed to help you, so if your friend is on the session then the attention becomes divided and will be less useful for you. Also, we’re not sure how parents or guardians would feel paying for someone else to be mentored!

A session will last a minimum of 30 minutes and a maximum of one hour. The scheduling system will pre-book the length of session that you would like. Obviously, if the session is going really well and you want to extend it and the Mentor has time, this can obviously be arranged then and there.

All sessions will take place online with cameras on. It is really important for you and the Mentor to see each other so unless there are exceptional circumstances, the session will not take place if cameras are off.

If you cancel the session late i.e., within 24 hours of the scheduled session taking place, your parents or guardians will be charged for the session.

The session you have with you Mentor is confidential, so no. If there is anything that a Mentor is concerned about of something you have said worries them, they may ask you if they can to talk to an independent expert to get an opinion on something. Otherwise, nobody needs to know what you are talking about.

Ultimately, we don’t support you meeting your Mentor, but obviously if that was something that would help you, we would agree, but only with you parents’ or guardians full consent. And it may be a condition that they were present at the meeting.