Looked-After Children Mentoring Scheme - Contact
As a virtual head teacher, designated teacher, social worker or foster parent, you could be hosting trained UEL undergraduate Mentors for your looked-after child. The aim of the scheme is to support children currently residing in care and in school years 10, 11, 12, encouraging them to achieve in their studies and raise their aspirations in a range of subjects. Mentors will provide 1-2-1 help to the looked-after child school activities.
What is the role of a LAC Mentor?
Mentoring is the relationship shared between a mentor and a mentee. A mentor is an individual who can offer guidance, support and knowledge to empower a mentee. The purpose of this scheme is to enable students to achieve their hidden potential. This is achieved by pairing a UEL student with a LAC student and the actions/intentions for the school student that comes from them having a regular conversation about their area.
Mentors will have the opportunity to:
- Develop the mentee’s confidence and motivation
- Enable the mentee to identify strategies to achieve within their studies
- Share subject insight
- Be a positive role model
NB: A mentor is not there to teach or tutor the student but to offer guidance in subject knowledge, Higher Education, and social and study skills.
How the scheme works?
Ideally the Mentor will be matched to a mentee who has a similar subject interest.
The sessions between mentor and the mentee will take place on a weekly basis, at school or a designated after-school venue and at the same time of day.
The sessions will be supervised by a designated teacher but the mentor will be meeting with the mentee on an individual basis.
Eligibility Criteria
To be eligible for the UEL LAC Mentoring Scheme young people need to be:
- Reside in a Local Authority Care Home or with a foster placement family for more than 13 weeks.
- Attend school in years 8 – 12.
- Reside and educated in the boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Newham, Tower Hamlets.
Referrals
Referrals for the scheme are made through the Virtual Heads in each borough, in consultation with social workers and the schools. The process VH must follow to refer a pupil is:
- Email a REFERRAL FORM to UEL LAC Contact (Sarah Dorrian s.dorrian@uel.ac.uk)
- UEL LAC Contact will process form onto database for matching
- UEL LAC Contact will match referral to potential mentors
- UEL LAC contact will send pen portraits of potential mentors to VH for final matching
Contracts and Service-Level Agreement
A Contract and service level agreement is then signed between UEL and the VH, detailing what they can expect from UEL during the mentoring process. The VH agrees to be the main point of contact for any problems arising and commits the young person to the amount of days agreed to be mentored.
Code of Conduct Form
The mentee is then given the pen portrait of their mentor and details on the next steps. As part of this they must sign and return (via the virtual head) the code of conduct form, in which they agree to certain criteria including their attendance.
For more information on this scheme please contact Sarah Dorrian in the first instance on s.dorrian@uel.ac.uk or 0208 223 2224
