How it works

We receive requests to help children between 5 and 16 years of age from schools, other charities, social services and from parents themselves. If children are referred by agencies or schools, it’s important that the parents are supportive of them having a mentor through Friendship Works.

Children can’t contact us directly to ask for a mentor, but they can ask their parents, or a teacher to get in touch for them. If you would like to refer a child to us, or see if we can help, please visit our refer a child section, where there is more information and an easy form to fill in and send to us. Or you can get in touch directly to talk to one of our team.

An experienced caseworker from our team meets with the family to do an initial assessment and see how we can help. Each family has two further meetings with us so that we can find out how a volunteer could best meet their needs. Once our caseworker knows a bit more about who the child would like as a mentor, they’ll start looking for a good match. It can take a week, or a few months. We put a lot of time and effort into finding the right mentor for the child. It’s worth the wait to find the person who will be able to build a long-term supportive relationship with them.

Safety first - recruiting our volunteers

We take the safety of our children and volunteers very seriously. When volunteers apply, they meet with our caseworkers for an interview lasting around 2 hours to find out if they are right for the role. If they are selected to be a mentor, they have full training, a home visit, supply 3 references and we carry out an Enhanced CRB check. Our team provides ongoing volunteer support and training. Volunteers have supervision regularly with our caseworkers to check how things are going.

Matching children and their mentors

Our caseworkers identify a possible volunteer for each child. Before setting up a meeting, we talk to the volunteer and the family to discuss the match. If everybody is happy to go ahead, we set up a meeting where the caseworker will introduce the child and volunteer and help them to think about what they plan to do for their first few outings together. We advise that these outings are simple activities and that they take place locally to start off with.

During the first meeting between the child and their volunteer mentor, they will usually sit down together to get to know each other a bit better and plan their first few outings. Trips might involve going to the cinema, visiting a museum, or going for a cup of tea and a chat.

Our volunteers, the child they are matched with and their parent are assigned a caseworker who is in regular contact to provide support, advice, and to make sure everything is going ok. This means we can pick up and tackle any problems early on to ensure that children are kept safe and that volunteers can do their role to the best of their ability.

As well as regular supervisions with volunteers and families to check progress, we hold formal review meetings with volunteers and families at 6, 12 and 24 months.