Previous Conferences

Mentoring 2000

The first in the current series of conferences took place in November 2000 at the Jarvis Piccadilly hotel in Manchester. It looked at general issue under the heading of mentoring with offenders, and was a first foray into this field for the organisers and for many delegates.

The event attracted around 120 participants over its two days. The evaluation indicated that 70% of those who provided feedback were positive about both the content and the organisation of the conference. It also told us that those working in the mentoring arena, and those thinking of doing so, welcomed a forum to discuss issues related to mentoring with offenders.

We attracted delegates from Europe and from the USA, including the Chief Executive of V.I.P. Mentoring, an organisation based in Detroit, Michigan. www.vipmentoring.org

Mentoring 2001

Our second conference was a one-day event at the Hilton Hotel in Sheffield. Designed around a theme of ‘Back to Basics in Offender Mentoring’, this event attracted 100 delegates, and focused on the fundamental but often overlooked or simply unrecognised issues in the field of mentoring with offenders.

The planning group felt strongly-and correctly as it turned out-that the impetus to set up mentoring schemes often meant that the foundation stones were not properly put in place. The conference therefore took a long and detailed look at such issues as recruitment, responsibility and accountability, support structures, and scheme management.

As with the 2000 event, participant satisfaction was high.

Mentoring 2003

Conference number three in the current series took place at the University of Salford, Greater Manchester, and was the most ambitious so far, spanning three hot days in July. The event focused on the training and support of mentors, but also majored on the evaluation of mentoring schemes. Again, we attracted delegates from Europe and the USA, among them VIP Mentoring from Detroit, and Probation staff from a court-based scheme in Lafayette, Indiana. In addition, the conference heard from I.T.I Inc, Potomac, Maryland, who had completed extensive research on the evaluation of mentoring projects.

Our own evaluation of the event showed that 68% of delegates rated the conference ‘good or better’, despite roasting in high temperatures throughout the three days!

This conference used an innovative technique called ‘Open Space Technology’ for part of its proceedings. OST is a means of allowing and enabling participants to decide on the content, and the format, of that part of the event, such that discussion topics are chosen ‘on the hoof’ by the participants themselves, according to a set of ‘rules of engagement’. OST allows them to attend discussions on topics of their choice for as long or as short a time as they wish.