Quality standards, and what happened to the one this sector had
Mentoring guidelines for a UK one to one scheme are the written rules a scheme sets itself across six areas: governance, volunteer recruitment and screening, matching, training, supervision and records, and endings and evaluation.
A coordinator who has been asked by a funder, a commissioner or a trustee board whether the scheme meets a recognised standard, and has discovered that the answer is complicated. It is also for anybody who arrived here looking for the quality mark this sector used to have.
Consistency. A standard is a list of the things that have to be true whoever is holding the post, so that a scheme does not silently become a different scheme when the coordinator changes.
Practice becomes personal. Screening, matching, supervision and endings all end up depending on the habits of one person, and the gaps only become visible during an incident, which is the worst possible audit.
Quality standards for this kind of scheme check the same six things, in a different order and with different wording. There is at present no single, universally recognised quality mark for mentoring and befriending schemes across the United Kingdom, which means most schemes hold themselves to a written self-assessment rather than to an external award.
What a quality standard for a one to one scheme checks
A quality standard checks whether a scheme has written down what it does, whether the written version matches what actually happens, and whether there is evidence of both. Assessment against any such standard is mostly document review followed by conversations with staff, volunteers and people using the service, testing the same six domains.
| Domain | What is checked | Typical evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Governance and policy | Who is accountable, which policies exist, when they were last reviewed | Safeguarding policy with a review date, named lead and deputy, trustee oversight |
| Recruitment and screening | Application, interview, references and the correct level of criminal record check | A recruitment file per volunteer, with a check recorded by level, date and reference number |
| Matching | How matches are decided, who is consulted, what happens when a match is refused | A written matching rationale, and evidence the person supported had a say |
| Training and induction | What every volunteer is trained in before first contact, and refreshed in afterwards | Attendance records, course content covering boundaries, safeguarding and reporting |
| Supervision and records | How often volunteers are supervised, what is logged, how long records are kept | Supervision notes with dates, session logs, a written retention schedule |
| Endings and evaluation | How matches close, and how the scheme knows whether it worked | Closure records by ending type, an outcome measure used at both ends of a match |
The second column is where most schemes are strong and the third is where they fail. Having a safeguarding policy is not the test; being able to produce the four most recent supervision notes, the retention schedule and the closure record for a match that ended badly is the test.
The Approved Provider Standard, in the past tense
The Approved Provider Standard was a quality mark for mentoring and befriending organisations, awarded by the Mentoring and Befriending Foundation, a registered charity. The Foundation closed, and with its closure the standard stopped being awarded. Schemes that held it held it under an assessment process that no longer runs, and there is now no body issuing it.
This matters practically, because funders and commissioners occasionally still ask for it on an application form copied from an older one. The correct answer to that question is that the standard is no longer awarded, followed by the evidence the scheme does hold against the six domains above. A scheme that once held the award may describe that accurately as history, with the period stated. It should not present a lapsed award as a current accreditation.
This site does not award, administer, assess, accredit against or advise on the Approved Provider Standard. It holds no records of which organisations held it, runs no equivalent scheme, and has no connection to the charity that awarded it. Kept Company is an independent, non-commercial reference and nothing more. Anyone who has arrived here expecting the Foundation has arrived at a different thing at the same address.
What a scheme can hold itself to now
A scheme holds itself to a written self-assessment, reviewed annually by somebody who is not the coordinator, and that is a stronger control than a certificate that hangs on a wall. Work through the six domains and answer each question with a document reference or a plain no.
- Name the person accountable for safeguarding, and the deputy, and check both numbers are answered.
- Confirm every active volunteer has a completed file: application, interview notes, two references taken up, and a criminal record check at the correct level.
- Confirm the check used is the right one for the nation, since England and Wales use the Disclosure and Barring Service, Scotland uses PVG scheme membership through Disclosure Scotland, and Northern Ireland uses AccessNI.
- Produce the matching rationale for the three most recent matches.
- Produce the training record for the volunteer matched most recently, and check it predates their first contact.
- Produce supervision notes covering the cycle the scheme has written down for each active volunteer, and identify anyone who has fallen outside it.
- Produce the written retention schedule, and check it is being applied, including deletions.
- Produce closure records for the last five matches, sorted by whether the ending was planned.
- Produce the outcome measure used, with completion rates at the start and the end of matches.
- List the complaints and safeguarding referrals of the past year, and what changed as a result.
Two of those items carry more weight than the rest. The proportion of matches ending as planned is the single best proxy for scheme quality, because it depends on supervision, matching and honesty all working at once. And a scheme reporting no complaints and no safeguarding referrals in a full year is not demonstrating quality; it is demonstrating that nobody has been asked.
A scheme is asked to name an accreditation it does not hold
The coordinator answers with what is true: the scheme is not externally accredited, here is the self-assessment, here is the date it was last reviewed and by whom, and here are the two domains it is currently weakest on. A funder can work with that. A funder cannot work with a claim that unravels at the first site visit, and a claimed accreditation is the easiest thing in a bid to check.
Who a scheme is accountable to whether or not it holds a standard
A scheme is accountable to several bodies already, and a standard sits on top of those rather than replacing them. A scheme run by a charity answers to its trustees and to its charity regulator for its governance and its serious incident reporting: the Charity Commission in England and Wales, the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, OSCR, in Scotland, and the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland. A scheme handling personal data answers to the Information Commissioner’s Office under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. A scheme working with children in a school works within Keeping Children Safe in Education in England, and within the equivalent frameworks in the other nations. A scheme working with adults at risk works within the Care Act 2014 in England, the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 in Wales, and the Adult Support and Protection (Scotland) Act 2007 in Scotland. Northern Ireland has no equivalent statute in force and works to the Department of Health’s 2015 policy Adult Safeguarding: Prevention and Protection in Partnership, under which responsibility sits with the Health and Social Care Trusts rather than with councils, which have no social care function there. Sector bodies such as NCVO publish general guidance on managing volunteers, which is useful background and is not an accreditation.
The volunteer
- Completes the induction and the refresher training, and does not start visiting before it.
- Works to the scheme’s written boundaries rather than to personal judgement.
- Keeps records the scheme can produce later, in the scheme’s system rather than a private one.
- Says when a policy does not fit the situation in front of them, so the policy can be fixed.
The person supported
- Is told what standard of service to expect, in writing, in plain language.
- Is told how to complain, to a named person who is not the volunteer.
- Can ask what checks and training the volunteer has completed.
- Is asked, at least once a year, whether the service is any good, and is told what changed.
The scheme writes the six domains down, reviews them annually with somebody independent of the coordinator, dates the review, and acts on what it finds. Where it claims a standard, it names the body that awarded it and the year. Where it holds none, it says so, and lets the self-assessment do the work a certificate used to.