Our Smash Life Mentoring is completely UNIQUE! we use a mixture of personal and professional experiences to engage, empower and raise aspirations. We like to be creative to make each session engaging and working with the children and young people we identify quickly what makes them comfortable to talk about their thoughts and feelings.

Our Shared Life unique Mentoring Scheme is able to provide a bespoke child-centred service utilising life experience and qualified positive role models to help with the following:

• Managing Feelings
• Talking about feelings
• Confidence Building
• Low Self-Esteem
• Create a Connection through a Positive Role Model
• Information Advice and Guidance
• Family Breakdowns
• Anti-Social Behavioural Issues
• Being placed into Foster Care or living in a Residential Home
• Dealing with Childhood Trauma
• Setting Achievable Life Goals
• Being Heard and Listened to
• School / Education
• Life Story Work – Creating a Memory Book
• Providing ‘Smash Life Experiences’

*NEW*

• We now also offer an NOCN Smash Life Accreditation which we can complete with the young people alongside our fun mentoring sessions- Please note this qualification is offered to young people aged 11-18 years of age. This accreditation will incur an extra charge on top of our mentoring fees to cover all admin fees for when the completed work is put forward to the NOCN for marking.

• We now offer Virtual Mentoring for young people who may benefit from this form of communication. This can apply to those young people with severe anxiety or to a young person who we can not get to because of geographical reasons. This makes our service UK wide!   The same quality of service will be on offer and we have a secure virtual platform we use to carry out these sessions and they have proved very successful for those young people who require it.

• We can also provide ‘Smash Life Experiences’ to promote a hobby or help build young peoples aspirations. We know that not all young people have the opportunity to have the same involvement and exposure to some positive activities we may take for granted. This is due to the reality they may find themselves in growing up. We want to be a service that provides learning and enriches lives through some fun activities. We can be flexible and tailor make a mentoring programme to meet a young persons needs.

• Smash Life now offer ‘Life Story Work’. We believe this is a vital and important piece of work for young people in the care system. Having had Life Story Work completed with us growing up we know first hand how important this work is. It can also provide young people with a wider knowledge as to who they are, why they are in care, and this can help them moving forwards with their new surroundings. We can use our creativity and work alongside young people to create something they can keep and look back on in years to come.

• Smash Life now offer ‘Mediation’. We see and have seen many examples of how low level conflict can quickly escalate into bigger issues for the individuals involved and at a cost to services (NHS/Police/Courts) and sometimes families and the local community. We now offer a neutral mediation service that you can book to come into any setting to try and resolve issues between two parties or individuals. Sometimes a neutral mediator can provide a safe platform for individuals to work through their differences without violence being used whilst at the same time learn how to talk instead of acting through fear or responding to threats of intimidation. We firmly believe by providing a space where grievances can be aired, listened to and resolved peacefully it is the way forward to tackling some of societies bigger issues – like the rise in knife crime. We are all about proactive early intervention work to create communities and people in them who are emotionally intelligent.

We can provide mentors who have a mixture of personal and professional life experience which is so powerful in terms of making a connection, building trust. By showing our vulnerability we make young people feel like they are not alone and as a role model show how important it is for us all to talk, listen and share our feelings in order to create a positive future.

We have already been able to establish positive connections and relationships where we have been able to “capture the voice” of the young person which has enabled other services and professionals working with the child / young person to adapt their approach ensuring we are all working together with the same aims to help children and young people “overcome life hurdles together”.

What do we need from you?

For our mentoring to have the maximum impact we would require an appropriate lit space on your premises, enough space to talk and play games as we are very creative and don’t just expect young people to sit down in a clinical setting and talk about their problems for a whole hour. We like to stimulate discussions by doing various fun activities inside and outside to promote discussion, learning and trust. This space will also have to a satisfactory amount of privacy so that the young person in question can feel safe enough to really open up, as that is what we are trying to do – capture the child’s voice and build that trust and provide that confidential space and setting for them to do so. If we feel the space allocated to us isn’t appropriate we will let you know.

We work with children and young people between the ages of 8-19.

In our experience many young people often ask professionals “What do you know?” this is where our service differs from others as we have lived a life within the care system and without a mum and dad for the majority of our lives.

Combined with our professional experience and qualifications we are able to offer that shared life experience and offer advice and guidance based on real life and not just from a text book. We find that this resonates with young people because we as adults are able to open up to them they in turn open up to us.

Smash Life is also creative in its approach to mentoring and getting young people to open up. It is limiting to just sit in a room and ask a young person to just “talk about it” and this can be oppressive for some young people.

By bringing sport, music, games, walks, and trips to the Mentoring we have found they create better results and the young people actually enjoy and look forwards to the sessions. Please check out the various testimonials that you’ll see around the website written by young people Smash Life have mentored.

We at Smash Life are passionate about capturing the young person’s views and voice as this is something that is very often missed by professionals and organizations. Our mentoring is driven by their agenda and their voice, after all it is their lives we are seeking to improve.

This is also relevant to professionals, as many people working with young people also want to know how it feels to grow up in the care system. Some of the questions we are able to answer and more vitally share our inside knowledge on are: “How did you deal with your abuse and trauma ?”,  “What makes a good foster carer?” , “How do I make a difference?” , “How did you survive all these years without a mum and dad?”,  “What challenges did you face once you left the social care system?” amongst many many others. We believe our lived experience combined with our professional ones gives us a unique edge in this sector.

This is why we have been booked by many organisations around the UK and universities to provide lectures with key messages to Social Work, Youth & Community Development students, CEO’S, Managers and experienced professionals.

To see what people have thought of our service please take a look at the feedback section on this website by going to the bottom of the SERVICES page.  Lots of positive Feedback can also be viewed via our various social media pages.

You can book the Smash Life Mentoring in blocks of one hour sessions for a minimum of ten sessions. This allows time to build up a trusting relationship with the young person in order for them to move forward, to overcome some of the obstacles that they may be facing (having either been identified in the initial referral or as a result of the young person opening up to us).

You can book further block sessions with us after the initial ten mentoring sessions but we will be asking the young person and professionals, carers also working and supporting that young person what the overall aim is going to be before agreeing to these .

Smash Life also provide reports for an additional small cost for every session we work with alongside the young person in question. This can to be shared with the referer, professionals or organisations working alongside that young person. We believe here at Smash Life that communication between professionals is very important for sharing positive outcomes, concerns and so that everyone is aware of the work being done.

We now also offer an NOCN Smash Life accreditation which we can complete with the young people alongside our fun mentoring sessions- Please note this qualification is offered to young people aged 11-18 years of age. This accreditation will incur an extra charge on top of our mentoring fees to cover all admin fees for when the completed work is put forward to the NOCN for marking.

What do we need from you?

For our mentoring to have the maximum impact we would require an appropriate lit space on your premises, enough space to talk and play games as we are very creative and don’t just expect young people to sit down in a clinical setting and talk about their problems for a whole hour. We like to stimulate discussions by doing various fun activities inside and outside to promote discussion, learning and trust. This space will also have to a satisfactory amount of privacy so that the young person in question can feel safe enough to really open up, as that is what we are trying to do – capture the child’s voice and build that trust and provide that confidential space and setting for them to do so. If we feel the space allocated to us isn’t appropriate we will let you know.

We are able to liaise with other professionals working with young people so that information is shared professionally, securely and appropriately. Time permitting we are also happy to attend professional meetings to plan and discuss the progress of the child / young person but please understand if we can not do this as this is not factored into the overall mentoring costs for our service. We can however if you make us aware of any meeting that concerns the young people we work alongside capture their voice or opinions and send that as part of our report to be fed into these meetings. We are fully aware having grown up in the care system ourselves that it can be very intimidating for young people to attend meetings with lots of other professionals in attendance.

Smash Life also provide reports for an additional small cost for every session we work with alongside the young person in our mentoring. This can to be shared with the referer, professionals or organisations working alongside that young person only. We believe here at Smash Life that communication between professionals is very important for sharing positive outcomes, concerns and so that everyone is aware of the work being done by all parties.

Smash Life can also provide reports for an additional small cost for every session we work alongside the young person you refer to us. This is to cover our time to complete them after each session. This can to be shared after each session with the referer, professionals or organisations working alongside that young person. We believe here at Smash Life that communication between professionals is very important for sharing positive outcomes, concerns and so that everyone is aware of the work being done and how the young person feels and so that their voice is always heard within the whole process which is the focal point of our work.