How should society measure the quality of a childhood?

What does it mean to have a ‘good childhood’? Should we measure a child’s number of friends? Family income? School marks? The Children’s Society has a different way answer to this question; let’s just ask the kids how they feel about their lives. Do they feel that they’re enjoying their childhood?

The Children’s Society recently published The Good Childhood Report 2012 – A Review of our Children’s Well-Being. The report is the result of six years of research using interviews and surveys of over 30,000 children aged eight to 16 living in the UK. What is unique about the project is that it focuses on children’s subjective well-being, rather than objective measures such as school attendance or family income. The aim of the report is to understand how children perceive their own happiness, and then to determine what factors affect their perception.

Something that is truly striking about the report is how insightful the children are about their needs, and about what makes them happy with life. For example, they don’t think that they need to be wealthy to be happy; they just want their family to have enough, and to have about as much as their friends’ families do. The report is quite extensive and we don’t have the capacity to give a proper overview, but you can find their conclusions on page 58 of the document.

There are a number of factors identified in the report that have a resounding implication for the importance of mentors. Children’s relationships with their friends are of course very important, but relationships with key adults in their life are even more important – for two reasons. First, children need to feel supported in a safe and trusted relationship with adults. Second, children need to be listened to, and as they grow up they increasingly need to feel respected, trusted with responsibilities, and active in decision-making. Mentors help supplement all of those things for children who aren’t receiving enough of it. By requiring a minimum commitment of two years from our volunteers, we ensure that relationships have enough time to develop trust and demonstrate to the child that the mentor will be there to care about and support him or her. In addition to lending a listening ear, mentors also help their mentees to participate in the planning of the activities that they do together.

Something that is unique about Friendship Works is that – as our name suggests – our volunteers are both an adult mentor and a friend. Friends are extremely important to children, and the children in the report highlight their need by noting that it’s good to have “a special friend you can always talk to or ask questions to”. The combination role of a key adult as well as a steadfast friend positions Friendship Works mentors as amazingly positive influences in the lives of children facing a tough time.

Finally, it really bears noting that stability is a theme that was repeated throughout the report. The importance of stability is something that Friendship Works has known for a very long time, and that is why we stand by our model of long-term relationships with the children that we support. The most inspiring sentiment that we took from the report is that a child’s low sense of wellbeing can truly be helped by the presence of a mentor in their life.

Levels of subjective well-being are changeable and low subjective well-being is not fixed or inevitable. It should be possible to prevent low well-being and avoid some of the potential longer term repercussions, by providing support for children during key transitions in their lives, and when they are facing particular challenges and adversities.

At Friendship Works, we strive to be the support that children need to make it through difficult times in their childhood. It’s nice to have a report to confirm that we can make a real difference to the life of a child.

Mentoring is smart business

A recent article by Success Magazine* focuses on successful mentoring programmes in the business sector. Although youth mentoring programmes in the community are sometimes disparaged as lacking clear value, professional mentoring programs are widely touted as being hugely valuable, especially by the businesses themselves. When a corporation that exists principally to generate profits speaks so highly about the value of mentoring, it speaks volumes about the benefits of mentoring programs generally.

So what has the business community learned about building a successful mentoring program, and more importantly, what implications does it have for youth mentoring programs?

First off, the article stresses that a mentoring program is not a replacement for good management and leadership, nor is it a substitute for development or training. Rather, a good mentor builds a relationship of trust where they can share their experience, insight, and help their mentee build connections. In the youth mentoring context, the clear parallel is that our mentors are not replacement parents; they are an additional trusted adult who will listen, share their wisdom, and help the child experience new activities.

Secondly, good mentoring programmes recruit mentors who are enthusiastic about the role – but who are also realistic about the time and energy that they will need to commit. In return, mentors should be provided with good quality training and ongoing support. This is important so that mentors have a clear understanding of their role and what boundaries should exist between them and their mentee. It’s also important to understand why people are applying to become a mentor.  It’s fine if somebody wants to build their CV or to gain recognition – but they should also want to make a difference and be keen to take up the challenge of the role.

Finally, the most successful mentoring programmes take time and effort to make the best possible match between a  mentor and mentee. To accomplish this, the program must take into account the experiences and interests of both. It is especially important to establish a quality relationship in the first few months, which can be done by starting with a formal structure and regular contact. At Friendship Works, we spend an enormous amount of effort on matching each child with the right mentor. We also establish a formal structure – regular and consistent meetings for a minimum of two years – so that the relationship has the chance to fully develop, become a valuable source of support for the child, and have a lasting impact.

In nearly every way, the key points highlighted by Success Magazine confirm the model that we have developed at Friendship Works over the past 30 years. We believe very firmly in the hallmarks of our model – such as the emphasis we place on long-term relationships, high quality matches, and professional training and support.

Our long-term vision for the future is to embed the concept of mentoring in the community so that children receive mentors in their community even without charities like ours. As one businessman in the article puts it, mentoring is not a separate programme in their company; it is part of the DNA of what they do. In the same vein, we hope to one day make mentoring part of our wider cultural DNA.

What do you think makes mentoring a success? We’d love to hear what you have to say.

* Available at http://www.successmagazine.com/how-to-develop-a-mentorship-program/PARAMS/article/1655/channel/22#

Celebrity patrons: getting the right support

Friendship Works is all about the transformative power of one to one relationships. We see this everyday in the friendships between our mentors and the young people they support.

Like individuals, organisations also need good friends in order to prosper and flourish. Over the last three decades one of Friendship Works’ most important and influential friends has been our Patron, Jonathan Pryce. Since 2005 he has hosted annual fundraising events for us and, in December 2011, starred in our show at the Café de Paris with fellow performers Michelle Dockery, Sian Phillips and Sheridan Smith, raising £115,000 – a huge amount for a small charity.

Jonathan’s recent article on The Guardian voluntary sector network described what makes for a good relationship between a charity and its patrons. His advice for charities is:

"Make sure that your patrons care and understand about your cause. Make sure you have a role for them. Famous names on a letterhead are attractive – but if you really use your patrons they will enjoy it far more. Give them a job to do that they can do well, and you'll go far."  

We’ve been really lucky to have patrons, like Jonathan, who’ve taken the time to understand what we do and who have been prepared to work closely with us to reach our goals.

I will be part of a panel hosting a live Q&A about charity patrons on The Guardian website tomorrow, Tuesday 17 January from 1-3pm. We’ll be taking questions and discussing the advantages and pitfalls of celebrity patrons. I hope that you’ll join me online to share your experiences and advice.  

Link to Q&A: http://www.guardian.co.uk/voluntary-sector-network/2012/jan/12/charity-celebrity-patrons-discussion?INTCMP=SRCH

Taking the bull by the horns in 2012

2011 couldn’t have ended better for Friendship Works. In December we received the 2011 Bank of America Neighbourhood Excellence Award, we had our most successful ever fundraising event at Café de Paris, and finished the year having established a record number of new mentoring pairs.

So what does 2012 hold for us?

The most important thing for me is that we continue to build on the quality of the service and increase the number of children we support. That may not be a dramatic headline but it is, after all, why we’re here.

We’ll be supporting more children in Southwark, a new borough for us, and one with different challenges. Like our current areas of operation (Camden and Islington) it has high levels of deprivation with 21% of children growing up in poverty, but is also a borough of great income inequality, with pockets of wealth nestled alongside some of the country’s poorest wards. It’s also going to be very badly affected by the current public service cuts. In cash terms, Southwark Council has been the hardest hit of all London boroughs and it’s inevitable that it will need to close down or reduce services for residents. I’m really pleased that we are able to be offer support to families facing difficulties in Southwark in such straightened times.

We’ll also be starting to support children from two parent families. Although Friendship Works was originally set up to support single parent households we also know there are many children from different backgrounds who could benefit. Some of our assessment and supervision processes need to change as we widen our remit and we’ll be trialling and reviewing these over the year. It’s an important development for us and it places children’s needs, not their circumstances, firmly at the heart of our service.

2012 is also the first full year of our grant from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. As part of their support, Jodie Dickey (one of our caseworkers) and I will be flying to the US for leadership training at the Centre for Leadership Innovation. It will also be a fantastic opportunity for us to meet with some of the large mentoring organisations in the US - charities like Big Brothers Big Sisters of America who have been hugely successful in embedding mentoring into communities across the country.

In summary, we hope that 2012 will be a year where we support many more children, continue to improve our understanding of why mentoring is so effective and grow from strength to strength as an organisation.

Thank you to everyone who’s pledged support to Friendship Works in 2012.We look forward to keeping you posted on developments.

* http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/feb/23/child-poverty-britain-map

New year's resolutions and the triumph of hope over experience

It’s that time of year again and I’m resolving, as I did last year (and possibly the year before) to do more exercise, improve my diet and finish an album of songs I’ve been working on since 2002. My New Year’s resolutions could fittingly be described as ‘The triumph of hope over experience’ (Samuel Johnson’s comment on the prospects of a second marriage).

Although Johnson’s remark was intended to be cutting, I do believe that hope can triumph over experience.

There is proof around us every day that this can be the case. We all know people who’ve struggled through bad times and experiences to make their way out of the tunnel towards a lighter and better existence.

There is a lot of debate about what enables people to keep going in adversity, and what helps them to get through the hard times. Some people call it resilience, and many believe that the ability to pick oneself up and start again is an essential ingredient for a life well-lived.

Prof. Martin Seligman’s fascinating research into ‘learned helplessness’ showed (firstly in animals and then in humans) that repeated exposure to problems over which we have little control can lead to despondency. This shows what happens when experience triumphs over hope. The debate about resilience, what it is exactly and how it helps or hinders our lives, continues.

But the fact is that most children will face problems and difficulties that are outside of the locus of their control. If these are significant and long-term it can lead to ‘learned helplessness’, a belief that it is not possible to effect change and improve one’s circumstances.

If children can have just one supportive adult in their lives to help them understand the challenges they face, it can help them believe that, despite difficult experiences, they still have the ability to solve problems and improve their lives. Often this adult will be a parent or other close family member. But for children who don’t have this support at home, a mentor from Friendship Works can make all the difference.

We hope that many Londoners will add ‘becoming a mentor at Friendship Works’ to their list of New Year’s resolutions. As we continue to expand our service in 2012 we will certainly need lots of good adults to come forward and volunteer. We have a large number of children on our waiting list, all of whom could really benefit from a few hours extra support a week.

In my next blog I’m going to outline some of our plans for 2012. It’s going to be an exciting year for Friendship Works. It’s our first year as a Bank of America Merrill Lynch Neighbourhood Builder Award winner and we’re looking forward to attending leadership training in the US.

We’re also getting involved in Beatbullying’s Big March at the end of January to campaign for the rights of children to be healthy, happy and safe from the fear of bullying – more on that next week.

Until then, please feel free to send us your resolutions for changing the world in 2012. We’d love to hear them. And may your hope continue to triumph over your experience!