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Confident Futures is an innovative pilot project, offering ementoring support to children in care and care leavers. Launched in 2008, the project was designed in consultation with care leavers to offer the sustained support and guidance that is so often missing from their lives. The site offers a host of resources to support anyone who is starting out on their own. The online curriculum of activities adds focus to the mentoring and helps mentors to guide their mentees and tailor support to meet their needs. Topics include:

• School support
• Starting out on your own
• Careers
• Further and higher education

Confident Futures is being piloted in three local authority areas until May 2010:

• North Lincolnshire
• Norfolk
• Hillingdon

Reading and Wokingham County Councils are also piloting Confident Futures to support young people not in education, employment or training (NEETs).

Get involved

We want to ensure that we can continue to support children in care following the end of the pilot and share lessons learned. In order to do this, we will make the online resources and mentee activities available through our national Bright Links ementoring programme. This means that existing and new Bright Links partner organisations will have targeted resources to set up or expand their own ementoring schemes to support children in care and other vulnerable groups. Young people will also be able to access the online resources via our Bright Knowledge site.

Click here to find out how to become an ementoring partner

Quotes

E-mentoring gave me the confidence to be able to go to job interviews and start a new job. It made me have more confidence in myself - Confident Futures mentee

You get a great sense of achievement seeing your mentee go through different stages and seeing them start to believe in themselves - Confident Futures mentor