| Challenge | Description | Strategies you could try |
| Meeting with you as their mentor | Many young people feel anxious to start something new, or have felt let down by people before. This may make it hard for them to feel able to attend planned appointments with you. If a young person misses one or more planned meetings with you, they may feel worried about what you think of them – possibly making it feel even harder to get in contact with you. | Remind them that you are still there, that you understand, and that you are ready for when they feel able to meet or speak with you. |
| Gently invite them to tell you what it is they are finding difficult about attending planned appointments, and then discuss how you can work together to make this easier – e.g., agreeing the focus of a planned meeting beforehand, meeting online or by phone instead of in-person, meeting in a relaxed/ informal place , providing reminders about the time and date of the planned meeting. | ||
| Engaging in HOPEFUL | Sometimes a young person might show up to a planned meeting with you, but not appear to be able or willing to work on HOPEFUL. | Don’t panic! Give them time and be patient. |
| Gently ask them what they would like to do and, as long as it’s possible and appropriate, just go with it – even if this doesn’t obviously involve anything to do with hope. | ||
| Sometimes a young person might repeatedly meet you but not appear to be able or willing to work on HOPEFUL. | Validate their experience – emphasise that interventions like HOPEFUL might feel uncomfortable or challenging, especially at first. Gently invite them to talk to you about what’s getting in the way of them using HOPEFUL, and ask what might help. | |
| Sharing thoughts and feelings with you | Many young people may struggle to share thoughts and feelings, even if they have a pre-existing relationship with you. It may therefore take them some time to feel able to open up to you and share their thoughts and feelings. It may also be that they never feel ready to do that. | Use the principles of HOPEFUL mentoring, including being open, sensitive and empathic. Reassure them that they only need to share what feels comfortable. Remind them of the agreement you have made with them regarding confidentiality – and its limitations – so they understand what you will do with any information they tell you. |
Regular check-ins about how it’s going. Reflect on that and make adjustments. Practice doing small steps and then talk about that – a little bit of a push to try new things to get more comfortable with doing things I don’t like. It’s important that homework is an option but not something that there’s load of pressure on to do.
| Challenge | Description | Strategies you could try |
| Using HOPEFUL | Young people may not like some activities in HOPEFUL, or not find them useful. | Be flexible and creative – skip past activities or change them in any ways you and the young person can think of to make them easier, more fun, or more helpful. Use the additional module resources for more options you could try. |
| Young people may express (or seem to feel) anxious or concerned about doing particular (or any) activities. | Have a go at the activity yourself first, or suggest that you both complete it yourselves but together. If you do activities yourself, you should share only what you feel comfortable to share and what feels appropriate. | |
| Young may not feel able to complete takeaway activities. | Reassure them they don’t have to do takeaway activities at all, or could do them with you if they prefer. | |
| It might help to do takeaway activities on the same day, at the same time. Encourage them to put a reminder into their phone to help them remember. Ask them if there is anyone else (e.g., relative or housemate) that might be able to remind or help them. | ||
| Some young person may have people around them who act in a way that seems negative or undermining about HOPEFUL, which could be demoralising or anxiety-provoking for the young person. | Gently explore what is happening and how they feel about it. Invite them to consider what might be going on for the people around them when they sound negative or undermining. | |
| Invite them to consider talking to the person/s who seem to be negative or undermining, if this might feel helpful. Offer to practice the conversation. Encourage them to use peaceful communication skills (Module 5). Invite them to think about what might help them to stay engaged with HOPEFUL if these challenges continue. | ||
| You can encourage them to use the share sheets at the end of each module – these have been designed to help young people to share what they are doing in the intervention with people around them. |
| Challenge | Description | Strategies you could try |
| Mental health | Problems with negative mood or depression are common for young people. People with low mood (understandably) tend to behave in ways that don’t necessarily help them to have good quality of life, e.g., they may struggle to live in line with their values or work towards their goals. | Spending more time in meaningful activity is actually an effective treatment for depression in its own right. Negative thoughts and feelings should change when someone has more positive life experiences. Increasing time in meaningful activity helps to lift mood and provide a sense of motivation and purpose. This might take some time. Gently and sensitively encourage them to be more active, as they might not really feel like doing much. Arrange to do activities with them. |
| Support the young person to access self-help guidance on depression (e.g., https://web.ntw.nhs.uk/selfhelp/ – see Informational Resources for more) and help them plan how and when to work through the self-help materials. | ||
| If problems with negative mood are very marked, prolonged, distressing, and/or impactful, then explore with the young person as to sources of support that they would be willing to try. Talk to your supervisor about this too. | ||
| Negative self-talk, either explicitly out-loud or silently inside their heads, is a common thing that young people experience. This is likely to be even more the case if they have experienced trauma or adversity and/or have or continue to experience depression. | To begin with, the best thing you can do is to believe in them – the expectations we have for others actually affect how they behave and feel about themselves. Without being too forceful or dramatic (which might be confusing or invalidating), reinforce the positive things they do and say. | |
| After a little time of working together (or if you already know each well), gently point out when the young person says negative things about themselves. | ||
| Encourage them to put to one side, for a moment, any ideas about whether their critical thoughts are valid or true. Encourage them to imagine putting on a pair of rose-coloured glasses and behaving as if they felt positive about themselves, i.e., doing what they think this kind of person would say and do. Encourage them to imagine wearing these glasses when they work on HOPEFUL – and perhaps other times too if they are willing – but that they can take the glasses off at any time if they want to. Then remind them about these glasses whenever you notice them being self-critical. Invite them to describe how it feels to be positive about themselves, versus when they think or say negative things about themselves. | ||
| Challenge | Description | Strategies you could try |
| Mental health | Anxiety is a common problem for many young people, and especially social anxiety. What maintains anxiety is avoiding the things that we feel anxious about. Avoiding them prevents us from learning that perhaps these things may not harm us as much as they do, or even if they are harmful, that we can bounce-back. | It’s never a good idea to try to force an anxious person to do something they are afraid of, but you can encourage them to work gradually towards overcoming fears in the knowledge that it is possible to do so. Explore with the young person what they feel anxious about and/or share your observations – and ask them if they have any sense of how you might support them to work on their anxiety. |
| It will help to focus on anxiety that gets in the way of reaching towards their goals. Ask questions to understand what this anxiety is and how it affects them. Gently encourage them to identify smaller and less anxiety-provoking versions of the things they fear. Practice working on these at a slow and gradual pace. For example, if a young person feels socially anxious, you might identify together a series of interactions to work through slowly and gradually, e.g., 1. talk to you at their home, 2. go for a walk with you, 3. walk with you to a cafe and spend time with you there, 4. stand with you whilst you order drinks and chat to the staff, 5., walk by themselves and meet you in the cafe, 6. order a drink for themselves. | ||
| Support them to access self-help guidance on anxiety (e.g., https://web.ntw.nhs.uk/selfhelp/ – see Informational Resources for more) and help them plan how and when to use the self-help materials. | ||
| If problems with anxiety are very marked, prolonged, distressing, and/or impactful, then explore sources of support that they would be willing to try. Talk to your supervisor about this too. | ||
| Alcohol and drugs | Young people may use alcohol or other substances in a way that makes it difficult for them to engage with HOPEFUL and/or to engage in other parts of their lives. For some young people, alcohol or substances may also mean that they engage in risky behaviour. | If you begin to believe that alcohol or substance use might be becoming a problem for a young person you are supporting, then it might be helpful to start by simply voicing that you are wondering whether they use alcohol or other substances and what effects they feel that this has in their life. |
| If you notice that they miss planned meetings with you due to drinking or using substances before the meeting, then you might ask if they would feel able to avoid these just before, or the day before, you meet. | ||
| If you feel concerned about their use of alcohol or other substances, you can share this sensitively with them by being clear that you are not judging their use, but you feel a little worried that it might be causing them some other problems in their life. | ||
| If you feel concerned about their use of alcohol or other substances, ask the young person how they might feel about using self-help resources (see Informational Resources) and/or getting some support with alcohol or substance use. Support them to identify and access self-help or services if they agree that might be helpful. | ||
| Discuss any conversations you have with young people about alcohol and drugs and share any concerns with your supervisor. |
| Challenge | Description | Strategies you could try |
| Help-seeking | Many young people can struggle to engage in help-seeking. This can be for many reasons, including that support services are not available or do not feel accessible, that young people feel anxious about seeking support, and that young people may have had negative experiences in the past when trying to/accessing support services. However, helping young people to try to engage with any support services that are available can be a really good thing – and can help them to build on all the gains they make during the time they spend being mentored by you. Support services for young people generally include health and community services that offer support for mental and sexual health, housing and practical support, and employment, education and training. Some services may be open to anyone, some will be for specific groups or people living in specific places, and/or may have thresholds relating to diagnosis, problem severity, or need. | Gain knowledge about what support services are available for young people in your area. We have made a few suggestions and provided you with space to record further services later in this manual). |
| Gently explore the young person’s thoughts and feelings about support service use, and any previous experiences they have had. Validate their experiences and acknowledge that the quality of support provision can be really variable, and also that not every type of support/service will feel useful – everyone is different and sometimes it is about the “fit”. | ||
| Gently mention any types of services that you think could be helpful, at a time that feels relevant. | ||
| Gently ask about what you might do to support a young person to try to access any relevant services, e.g., find out information, practice conversations, help draft a letter, accompany the young person either to the appointment or actually go in to the appointment with them (if appropriate). |