Mentor Project, TEF Mental Health & Wellbeing

The Mentor Project Is a project designed for our TEF mental health and well-being members, the members of this group can attend various groups and activities on offer within this project. The Mentor Project supports vulnerable people in our community with their mental health and well-being, our groups include wraparound support and counselling and non-judge mental safe groups to speak openly in. We have supported over 50 individual men over the term of this project, and we have now supported five of our clients to have mental health studies diplomas, which intern helps with employability, self-esteem, Self-worth. The Mentor project has been a huge success given the struggles that all charities and health and social care organisations have had to cope with in the last two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a lot of issues for our clients and our clients have never needed our support more than now. Our support workers and volunteers are dedicated to the cause of supporting our community and making sure our clients have the best support possible. We offer a range of light snacks and coffee and tea in all of our groups, we have given out over the past two years over 2000 cups of tea 1800 cups of coffee  and many snacks to our clients who have greatly appreciated this. With COVID-19 we have also had to spend some of our budget on COVID-19 protocol i.e. COVID-19 PPE that was required to keep TEF open. We have used lots of virtual means to keep in touch with our clients who are isolated and do not wish to leave their homes during the past two years, this was great as it really helped support our clients who were isolated and now they have support in their own home without having to leave. We have had a record number of referrals this year for our Mentor  project, These referrals came from statutory services such as Police, NHS, YMCA Burton, mind, crisis services, local health and social care units, and care homes. We have had to cap the Mentor  project at 50 clients as we are only a small team and this number of clients makes it better for our staff and volunteers as we can offer a better quality service all around, also managing the COVID-19 policies and procedures that TEF have put in place to keep all of our staff volunteers and clients safe has made this difficult to have any more than 50 clients attending our groups. Within the mentor project we also have one-to-one support sessions for Our clients who access our services, this entails one-to-one support and wraparound service i.e. talking therapies, housing support, Debt support, Soft law support, welfare support, And many more services available. Our staff and volunteers have managed to clear over £40,000 of non-priority debt including unsecured loans, credit cards, and catalogue accounts, this has really helped support our clients during this tough time with COVID-19. Our clients have also completed a range of CPD online courses such as addiction courses, mental health awareness course, and COVID-19 awareness course, we aim to give our clients the best service and offer them a chance to become qualified in certain areas and gain experience to get them back into work and have Self  Independence. We have done a pre-and post evaluation we have had 33 responses from the 50 clients, we made this a non-mandatory form as not to put pressure on the clients, we feel as though the feedback we have had has been extremely positive and shines a positive light on this project.