Engage Mentoring Scheme is a primary prevention program, which aims to prevent the risk of or those in permanent exclusion.
Early intervention is important given the costs involved with youth offending – with it estimated “on average, each young offender costs £8,000, per year, to the criminal justice system” (National Audit Office 2011) - and the connections between youth offending and absent fatherhood with the Prison Reform Trust (2010) research finding that 76% of children in prison had an absent father.
Delivered in a secure environment, alongside peer mentoring and the promotion of positive role models. Actions at an individual and family level include building responsive relationships and strengthening core life skills, provide support to young people who are at risk of poor outcomes and tackle the problem that they face before they in fact become worse. Our view is that primary prevention is key to getting involved early with young people and developing trust and therefore in a position to avert them from getting involved in crime and violence.
The activities will involve detailed peer and group mentoring, structured workshops that include the dangers and consequences of knife crime, reduce access to lethal means and work in partnerships with local schools, youth groups and Identify and raise awareness and educate around the areas of bullying, self-harm, drug, alcohol, and county lines. Informed discussions and interactions about the views, triggers, attitudes and core beliefs in regards to violence. This is key to our aim of creating a full network of interventions around young people from various ongoing initiatives as well as new concepts in line with the community partnerships strategy enabling us to promote safe, nurturing and stable relationships between their parents and or carers.
Encouraging all our deliveries, signposts and referrals are dealing with the core issues of trauma as opposed to the symptoms. Quite often the absence of fathers in due to domestic abuse within the household so we aim to work with those affected by domestic abuse and show challenge and correct derogatory attitudes towards women and girls and that its not ok to express violence be it physical, emotional or mental towards them.
This safe space access to young people provides a far greater ability of signposting to trauma informed services and referral services to mental health services. A clear focus on the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse with testimonies from speakers who have experienced and overcome drug and alcohol addiction.