These recommendations were developed through a collaborative workshop, involving Nesta, Manchester Metropolitan University’s Policy, Evidence, and Research Unit, and individuals with practical experience of designing and delivering mentoring programmes. The recommendations here are targeted at individuals and organisations involved in the commissioning, design and delivery of youth mentoring programmes.

Programme design and delivery

• Mentors and mentees should work together to find activities that maintain motivation and help progress towards goals.
• Mentors might benefit from giving each other peer support, and having wider formal and informal support mechanisms in place, perhaps as part of wider support for mentors and mentees.
• Commissioners and providers need to allow time and resources to set up a programme, to recruit and train mentors, and to match them with mentees. This includes preparing and training mentors and mentees about expectations, aims of the programme and practical considerations. Consider including pre-programme information sessions, so that mentors and mentees are aware that successful relationships require commitment from both parties.
• Commissioners and providers should focus on the fundamental role that matching plays in successful programmes. The process needs to give agency to mentees while recognising the role that shared experience and cultural sensitivity can play in successful relationships. A matching process might involve: meetings where prospective mentors and mentees can meet each other informally, providing mentees with information and profile about potential mentors, and/or guided matching by staff based on mutual interest or similarities but where the final decision lies with the mentee.
• Commissioners and providers should focus on how to measure progress and outcomes. This might involve working closely with researchers and research commissioners, who should consider the need to understand the impact of youth mentoring schemes in the UK. Other areas where research is needed are around the matching process, about the quality and quantity of mentoring relationships, and about the role that the mentee agency plays in achieving outcomes.

Mentor and mentee characteristics

• Mentors’ and mentees’ investment in the programme, and commitment to the mentoring relationship, is core to achieving outcomes. It is good to check occasionally on what you both want to get out of participating in the programme and provide feedback on progress.
• Mentoring providers may need to balance giving agency to mentees in decisions around their mentors matching based on shared interests and backgrounds and cultural sensitivity – both of which can produce better outcomes. Where they may be in conflict, we think the mentee agency should come first. It is important to avoid making assumptions about what shared interests and backgrounds that mentees place value on... It is also important to balance the evidence with practical and resource considerations, such as the number of mentors available, availability of mentors with backgrounds that complement that of their mentee, and the size of the area covered by the programme.

Relationships

• Building rapport and trust between mentors and mentees is key to successful relationships. This can involve agreeing how and when to be flexible, understanding each other’s motivations and understanding the damage that can be caused by early unplanned termination of the mentoring relationship.
• Commissioners and providers should ensure that mentors and mentees are supported to develop and sustain longer-term mentoring relationships, as these lead to better outcomes. More research is needed to understand why longer relationships result in better outcomes, and how this insight might affect programme design and delivery.