Mentoring for Progression: Peer mentoring in a Young Offenders Institution
LEAD ORGANISATION
ADDITIONAL ORGANISATIONS INVOLVED
PROJECT SUMMARY
This project aimed to train and empower prisoners at Reading Young Offenders Institution to enable them to reach their full potential by gaining relevant qualifications, including progressing into HE if this is appropriate and fits in with their goals. This pilot project was an extension of a previous successful project at HMP Spring Hill in Buckinghamshire, the results of which suggested that an effective way of empowering prisoners through mentoring was to move as quickly as possible to a situation where prisoners themselves are acting as mentors. This project extended the concept to work with young offenders at HMYOI Reading, a small prison holding prisoners between the ages of 18 and 21 years.
Fourteen prisoners applied to take part in two preliminary IAG sessions that acted as a screening process for subsequent participation in the peer mentoring. As a result of the screening, seven prisoners were chosen to participate in peer mentoring sessions. In these, prisoners were given the opportunity to understand and appreciate the benefits of mentoring, experience the benefits of receiving a mentoring session from one of their peers, put their mentoring skills into practice by delivering a peer mentoring session and to build a personal action plan.
The mentees completed action plans similar to those used in previous 'Mentoring for Progression' projects, with the addition of some context-specific questions around their educational experience prior to coming to prison and their expected release date. Because the prisoners were not able to carry out their own research, due to lack of access to the internet, the research component was carried out on behalf of the prisoners by The Learning Ladder and the information then fed back to the mentee.
IMPACT
Evaluation of this pilot initiative took the form of a semi-structured focus group of participants, comprising three Reading prisoner mentors. The difference being trained as a peer mentor can make is evidenced by feedback from those taking part. This also demonstrates, in the words of the prisoners, the importance of the mentoring being carried out by fellow prisoners rather than members of staff or external mentors:
"If the governors tried to do what we do then the prisoners wouldn't listen, they would just see it as lecturing - but we are in the same position so they are more likely to listen."
"Having you has been great cos you don't work for the prison."
"Because you are not from the prison I concentrate more."
Encouragingly, the feedback also highlights the difference peer mentoring can make to self-esteem, confidence and, critically, the prisoner's attitude to their own potential for re-offending:
"You challenge us more to think differently, it has made me take more responsibility for my actions and staying straight."
"More of this should happen because you are giving people a future, who thought they never had a future."
The pilot peer mentoring project appears to have been extremely successful and there is interest in embedding the scheme in the prison. The seven prisoners who took part in the peer mentoring sessions are now equipped to act as mentors for fellow prisoners and have already run personal development sessions themselves. The prison as a whole is much further along the road to embedding peer mentoring thanks to the decision to equip a number of prisoners with the skills to act as peer mentors for other prisoners. With this in mind, The Learning Ladder has subsequently, sponsored by Progress South Central, run a second phase of peer mentor training sessions in the prison.