Smash Life

Smash Life will come into your school to offer 1:1 mentoring from a positive role model. Also group work covering topics such as drugs and alcohol, healthy relationships, gang culture, and aspirations.

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.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

Type: Mentoring

Age: 8-19 years

Website: Smash Life

 

Most recent Shropshire Council Quality Assurance*

Date: 00/00/2024

By: Julie Johnson - SEND & AP Change Programme Partnership Senior Lead

 

*Please remember that ALL schools and trusts are expected to carry out their own quality assurance of the provision alongside the local authority.