Care Experienced Young Person Programme Co-Design & Mentoring Opportunity

Unfold is an organisation running mentoring programmes for young people aged 10-25yrs old. Our mentoring supports people to identify and achieve their goals, boost confidence and connect with the wider community to meet their needs for lasting change. Mentoring runs for 1-2 hrs a week, across 12-24 sessions, where sessions can take place in person, online or over the phone.

This year in collaboration with Westminster & Kensington and Chelsea council, Unfold will be co-designing and delivering a mentoring programme for young people who has experience in care. To better meet the needs of the young people who has experience in care, we’re looking for people with and without lived experience to support in co-designing the programme.

Co-design opportunity:

We’re looking for mentors aged 18+, most of whom have lived experience of the care system, to support us in reviewing our training, resources and become mentors on the programme. For individuals who may not have lived experience of being in care, we are particularly interested if you have a background in or currently studying psychology, social work or therapy/counselling.

You’ll help revise our Mentor Training so that we can tailor it for the specific requirements of a programme for people with experience in care. To do this, you’ll complete our existing Training package and participate in 2 workshops running in October.

1) You’ll complete our online Ascend training (3 hours)

2) Complete our live training (5 hours)

3) Attend 2 workshops, each around 2 hours, to give your feedback on our online and live training modules. The workshops will be held online or in our beautiful office space in Victoria, London.

The proposed dates for the workshops are below but not yet confirmed:

• Wednesday 2nd October 5.30-7.30pm – Ascend workshop
• Saturday 5th October 10am-4.30pm – Live training & workshop

You’ll also complete our full onboarding processes for volunteers including an interview, references and enhanced DBS check.

Mentoring:

From October 2024, you will be matched with young person between aged 10-25yrs, and hold weekly Mentoring sessions for 1 hour a week. Ideally we are looking for mentors who can meet in person in Westminster, Kensington or Chelsea, but there is the possibility of holding some sessions online or over the phone. 

Throughout the mentoring journey, you will attend our online monthly Mentor Supervisions to share your experiences, learnings and connect with other mentors and services – you’ll become part of an incredible community and continuously learn!

What you’ll get:  

• Build transferable skills, such as empathetic leadership and programme development 
• Compensated for your time during the co-design process (London Living Wage)​, plus travel.
• Opportunity to widen your network and give back to the community
• Work with an incredible team and build an understanding of how organisations like us work and play an important co-designing a programme!

To apply:

Applicants should complete the referral form linked on this page. Please refer to the ‘CEYP project’ in your notes under 'Please tell us why you are interested in becoming a mentor'

Please let us know if there are any other barriers to you applying for the opportunity, and we’ll do our best to accommodate.