What is mentoring and what is befriending?
Both are terms that describe volunteers working on a one-to-one basis, supporting people in the community. Both are activities which involve a volunteer offering another person in need a helping hand.
The differences between them include:
Mentoring
- Is issue based - it may deal with problems or changes in people’s lives caused by issues such as drugs, homelessness, unemployment and growing up.
- Is structured into sessions and will be time-limited.
Befriending
- Is situation based – it may deal with those who are lonely or isolated through problems such as social disadvantage, ill health or asylum.
- Is a more sustained relationship that often includes social activities within its sessions.
Obviously these are not rigid definitions, but hopefully they help to highlight some of the common differences between mentoring and befriending schemes.
National support for mentoring and befriending
‘Mentors' and ‘befrienders' are recognized roles across the public, private and voluntary sectors. This activity within the voluntary sector has increasingly been recognized by government as a way of improving social cohesion and building active citizenship.
In a keynote speech at NCVO's national conference in February 2004 Gordon Brown highlighted 3 key areas of work, one of which was mentoring. He spoke of expanding and extending the scope of mentoring, recognizing in particular the voluntary sector's reputation for creative thinking and innovation which he felt should be harnessed in order to recruit, train and link 1-1 volunteers.
The Government has recently funded the Goldstar Exemplar Programme. The programme aims to encourage and help voluntary organisations throughout England to realise the potential of volunteers, mentors and befrienders from socially excluded or disadvantaged groups. A range of good practice case studies have been collected as part of the programme, and they can be explored on the Goldstar website.
The Mentoring and Befriending Foundation (MBF) is a nationwide organisation which provides support to anyone working in mentoring and befriending. MBF offer guidance and support to organisations, as well as running the "Approved Provider Standard" which is a national quality mark scheme for organisations which provide one-to-one, volunteer mentoring or befriending. Further information is available on the MBF website.
