HOPEFUL is designed to be completed within about 16 weeks (although we recommend young people use the workbook for as long as they find it useful to do so). Over this 16 weeks, we recommend young people meet with their mentor for about an hour, every week or two – if they both can. Overall, we recommend that they meet at least four times as a minimum. They might see each other more often, for example up to about 12 meetings in total. The mentor will be invited to talk through these kind of decisions with the young person in the introductory session in which they complete a mentoring agreement together.

After the introductory session, the mentor and young person will start working through HOPEFUL’s six modules. You’ll see a list of those on the next page. We recommend they work through the modules in the order they are provided. We recommend that young people aim to try and work through at least one session (e.g., one meeting with their mentor) from each of the six modules. Again, this is just a guide.

In each of the six modules in the young person’s workbook, there is:

• Module introduction and introductory video to say what the module is about
• Module contents page to show the list of activities that make up that module:
  • Module activities – designed to be done with the support of a mentor
  • Takeaway activities – designed to be done by the young person alone
  • There are different options for completing the activities – young people can choose the options they like best
• Module lived experience story to show someone else’s experiences that are relevant to the module
• Module share sheet to help the young person to tell other people in their life about what they have been working on in the module – and tell these people about what they could do to help