Running a mentoring or befriending scheme
A mentoring programme is a managed one-to-one service: it decides who it is for, recruits volunteers, checks them, trains them, matches them, supervises the matches, reviews them and closes them.
A coordinator handed a mentoring programme to set up, or an existing one to inherit, part-time and with nobody left to ask.
The person on the receiving end. Every stage a scheme skips is a cost that lands on them, not on whoever skipped it.
Schemes run the stages in the wrong order. Recruiting feels like progress, so it goes first, and eight weeks later there are twelve keen volunteers, no referral route and nobody who can say who approves a match.
The same twelve stages apply whether the work is called mentoring, befriending or telephone befriending, and at six matches as much as six hundred. The volunteering is the visible part and the smallest part: 60% to 80% of what a scheme costs is coordination, and coordination decides whether the mentoring helps anybody.
Should this programme exist at all
Before a programme is designed, ask the prior question and write down the answer: is a volunteer scheme the right instrument here, or the instrument you can get funded? Three tests answer it.
- Name the problem precisely. A scheme can reduce loneliness, how a person feels, without reducing isolation, how many contacts they have. Around 6% of adults in Great Britain report feeling lonely often or always, according to the Office for National Statistics: context, not a demand forecast.
- Check you can ask for the time the work needs. A programme for children that cannot ask for twelve months should not be recruiting children into it.
- Check you can fund coordination, not the launch. Volunteers are a delivery model with an overhead, and the overhead is the programme.
Twelve stages, set out in this order
No sector body publishes an official list, so these twelve stages are this site’s own ordering, set out in this order because each one produces what the next one needs. Starting at recruiting volunteers, the second stage, before the first stage has settled who the scheme is for, is the commonest failure in this field.
| Stage | What happens | Who decides |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Designing the scheme: purpose, population, referral route, dose, duration and exit | Coordinator, signed off by trustees |
| 2 | Recruiting volunteers, against the referrals the scheme actually has | Coordinator |
| 3 | Screening and criminal record checks: application, references, interview, the check at the right level for the nation | Coordinator plus a second decision maker |
| 4 | Training volunteers, and inducting them before any contact | Coordinator |
| 5 | Matching, with a real choice given to both people | Coordinator, never the volunteer |
| 6 | Supervision and records: the live match on a named schedule, logged and retained | Coordinator |
| 7 | Safeguarding and lone working: named lead, reporting route and visiting rules, written before the first match | Trustees or the safeguarding lead |
| 8 | When it goes wrong: drift, dependency, drop-out, breakdown, complaint or allegation | Coordinator, with the safeguarding lead where it is a concern |
| 9 | Ending well: closing the match, planned and marked | Coordinator, with both people |
| 10 | Evaluation: reviewing matches against the purpose set at stage one | Coordinator and trustees |
| 11 | What it costs: funding coordination for the length the matches are meant to run | Trustees or governors |
| 12 | Quality standards: an annual written self-assessment across the whole list | Somebody independent of the coordinator |
Stages two to five, recruiting through to matching, are the pipeline, and a volunteer takes 6 to 12 weeks from application to first meeting, most of it waiting on references, the criminal record check and the next training date. Say that number at the point people apply, because the ones who drop out do so in the silence.
What the programme asks of each side
The volunteer
- Gives about an hour a week, on the days agreed rather than when convenient
- Stays the length the scheme asked for, or says early that they cannot
- Reports concerns the same day, and keeps it inside the scheme: no private numbers, no lifts, no money
The person supported
- Can decline a match, and end one, without a reason and without losing the service
- Is told what is written about them, who reads it and how long it is kept
- Is told at the start when the match ends, and can say what the time is for
The scheme carries what neither of them can: the risk assessment, the supervision, the records and the matching decision. A scheme that has handed any of those four to a volunteer has delegated the work, not the responsibility, and it is still the body that answers if something goes wrong.
You are asked to run a six-week mentoring block for children
The volunteer is not recruited into it and the coordinator refuses the design. Youth mentoring matches ending before three months are associated with outcomes worse than no match at all, published by Grossman and Rhodes in 2002. Short, well-meant contact with a referred child is a measurable harm, not a small benefit. If the funding buys six weeks, buy something else with it.
Programme or program, scheme or service
Programme and program are one word with two spellings. UK English uses programme for an organised set of activities and keeps program for computing; American English uses program for both, which is why American guidance describes these same stages under the other spelling. Nothing in UK funding or inspection turns on the spelling, and scheme, programme and service are interchangeable here.
Programmes built for one group of people
Programmes built for one group, such as Black and mixed-heritage young men, autistic adults, care leavers or refugees, run the same twelve stages with three things changed: recruitment channels, training content and matching criteria. An autism mentoring programme is judged on whether it adapts the mechanics: predictable times, one venue, written confirmation before each meeting, an ending signalled weeks ahead. A programme for a cultural group is judged on whether volunteers came from that community rather than were assigned to it.
What a programme costs to run
A programme costs £700 to £2,500 per active match per year, all in: telephone befriending, where calls run 20 to 45 minutes weekly and nobody travels, sits at £700 to £1,200, and youth mentoring with a referred young person at £1,500 to £2,500. That width comes from referral complexity, coordinator hours, volunteer travel and expected match length. No national price index exists for this work, so these are working ranges, not survey data. Capacity binds before money: one full-time coordinator holds 30 to 50 active matches. A scheme planning ninety matches on half a coordinator is not ambitious, it is unsupervised.
Closing a match well
To close a match well, design the ending at stage one, when the scheme is designed, and name it at stage five, at matching, before the pair have met. Surprise endings do the damage, because people referred into these schemes are disproportionately people to whom adults have already stopped turning up. A planned close has four parts: a final date confirmed with both, a last meeting that is marked rather than allowed to dissolve, a separate conversation with each afterwards, and a written record. Youth mentoring asks for 12 months; befriending commonly runs 6 to 12 months and is often open-ended for older people, which makes a review date more important.
A match that goes quiet is closed rather than left. The volunteer reports the first missed meeting, the coordinator contacts both people within a week, and the match is closed or restarted formally, because a scheme that lets matches evaporate never learns why they do.
Records outlast the match: volunteer files and session logs commonly 6 years, and decades for a child safeguarding concern. UK GDPR fixes no period, it requires the scheme to set one and apply it.