BBC - Radio 4 Woman's Hour -Mentoring

Is it the way forward for troubled young people?

One million young people under the age of 24 are going to be out of work in this country, within the next few months. According to the author Fran Abrams, many of them have grown up in areas where aspiration has died or barely exists. They have been let down by their families, their teachers and by the Government which is providing schemes they are simply failing to access. In her new book, "Learning to Fail", Fran shows that with no employment and no direction, the lives of young people can spiral into poverty, family disintegration and homelessness. This is what happened to Elvige. Struggling with a dysfunctional family and the threat of poverty and homelessness, she dropped out of college but she’s now a confident young adult studying for a degree and working with troubled youngsters. Elvige has turned her life around with the help of a mentor and she joins Jenni to talk about how effective mentoring can be for socially excluded young people. She’s also joined by Fran Abrams and by Yasmin Begum, a mentor working for the charity Rathbone.

Learning to Fail: How Society Lets Young People Down’ by Fran Abrams is published by Routledge Education, ISBN 978-0-415-48396-4

Rathbone
CSV
Youth Action Network
Barnardo's
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