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Project
Description
Chance UK Primary age children with behavioural difficulties
who are at risk.

Chance UK is a charity company limited by guarantee based in Finsbury Park and covering schools in Hackney and Islington. It was established by a policeman from the area who noticed an increasing number of children getting in trouble with the police. He realised that early intervention could make a real difference. The project identifies primary school children with behavioural difficulties who are at risk of developing anti-social or criminal offending behaviour in the future, and seeks to improve their lives by offering them one-to-one mentoring with a carefully screened, trained and supervised adult volunteer, and support and guidance to the children’s parents and/or carers.

image of children -Michael & Daniel
Michael and Daniel

The staff and volunteers aim to address directly the difficulties experienced by each child and to support them as they find the motivation and life skills they need to move forward, and to channel the children’s disruptive energy into projects that encourage a sense of personal achievement and engender a sense of self worth. In May 2006 their success was recognised when they won the Queens Award for voluntary service.

Among the aims of the project is to encourage and support the set up of other early intervention programmes and promote good practice. Chance UK is a specialist mentoring service in this field, and is able to focus on this activity through a range of measures, including finding new funding for the appointment of a National Development Officer.

Recognising the importance of attracting suitable volunteers the Project has developed an effective recruitment programme; this was illustrated in 2003 when it won a European-wide competition with its PR campaign to recruit mentors. The project has also won funding to appoint a Volunteer Recruitment Officer. An issue that Chance UK has tackled is that many of the boys who are on the programme have no positive male role model and so much effort has been concentrated on recruiting male mentors. This effort has seen an increase from 8% in 2002 to 35%. The prospect is that this will rise higher since the introduction of men’s Recruitment Evenings. The campaign to recruit more male volunteers also includes targeting BME males, especially those who come from similar backgrounds to the children.

The relationship between the volunteer mentor and the child is critical to the success of the Project. At every stage of the recruitment, induction and training process this issue is paramount, and a range of measures are in place to ensure that recruits are trustworthy, committed and passionate about the work of the project. Chance UK also aims to have 50% more mentors than children to ensure the best possible match can be made. Attention to the supervision and management of the volunteers has seen Chance UK winning an award from Camden Volunteer Bureau.

Chance UK makes every effort to measure impact . Using the Goodman Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire they are able to determine that in 2005 45% of the children had no behavioural difficulties at he end, and 88% had a reduction in score. The project aims to build on this by bidding for funding to carry out a longitudinal study.

www.chanceuk.com

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