Young People: Mentoring

Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

As I said, mentoring and providing advice and support for young people is clearly a priority as we are putting £20 million into mentoring. We are trying to make sure that excellent schemes that have been proven to have a real impact on young people’s lives are able to access new funding so that young people can fulfil their potential and get the support, help and guidance from inspirational mentors that we know can make a significant difference.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

I welcome all that the Government are doing on mentoring, but what are they doing to ensure that the quality is monitored? The expansion is large and rapid, which can sometimes cause serious problems with quality. How is it to be measured?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

As I said, this new fund will be about scaling up proven mentoring schemes, so quality will be at the very heart of ensuring that young people get access to the kind of schemes that make the most difference for them. However, we also need to make sure that these schemes are available in areas where provision is patchiest. The analysis that I talked about earlier, identifying areas of the country where real support is needed—and needs to be improved—means that we can encourage proven schemes to expand into those areas, so that all young people have access to that kind of support.