News

TWMAD News will present weekly case studies which briefly describe the journey and impact of our 1:1 mentoring services. Our TWMAD mentors are dedicated to supporting vulnerable children in our community. Every referral we receive is unique, and we work closely with each young person to create tailored action plans designed to guide them through times of uncertainty. Imogen a young person under our care, faced severe emotional challenges, including self-harm, substance use, truancy, and multiple instances where she was found at a bridge contemplating self-harm. Over a series of 1:1 mentoring sessions, we focused on helping Imogen build trust, articulate [...]

As the 23/24 academic school year draws to a close, the team at TWMAD would like to extend our heartfelt thanks for your partnership and support. This year, TWMAD has had the privilege of playing various roles within many schools across Staffordshire, who have provided us with opportunities to continue delivering and developing our 1:1 mentoring support for the children who needed a little extra assistance. We have also had the pleasure of organising both primary and secondary emotion coaching drop-in sessions, developing a program for school refusers, and delivering our "On the Brink" and "Exploring Masculinities" presentations and workshops in [...]

  TWMAD awarded two contracts to deliver our services to five high schools across Lichfield. Emotional-Based School Refusal TWMAD will provide each high school with the opportunity to refer students who are considered school refusers and have low attendance for one-on-one mentoring support. TWMAD have the opportunity to showcase our abilities to engage the most disengaged young people, and begin to bridge the gap between them and their schools. We will work alongside the chosen student to create the conditions for  them to feel more comfortable accessing their education. Our mentors will assist them with their education and to overcome any [...]

TWMAD are on hand to work in neighbourhoods to engage and understand how life is for young people in the communities which they live. Sadly not a week goes by where we are not reading stories about disillusioned young people becoming involved in negative activities such as Knife Crime, Anti Social Behaviour, Gangs, Drug & Alcohol Abuse, Violence & Crime. Whether you’re a community group or centre, local authority, or police service, TWMAD are on hand to find out what the local issues are and work collectively to try and make the neighbourhood a better place to live for everybody. TWMAD [...]

It’s been a busy time the last few weeks putting together the plans for this Summer's Youthtopia which TWMAD delivers as part of #HAF2023 programme. Youthtopia is our hugely popular holiday club which features sports arts & crafts tenpin bowling and loads of other fun games and activities. All the places were snapped up very quickly for our first 2 weeks, but we have now extended it to 3 weeks and have places available to book on by clicking the link below. TWMAD work in partnership with the Hubb Foundation and The Double Tree Hilton, Stoke on Trent. [...]

This year is flying by and I can’t believe that the school summer holidays are already upon us. This means that our student support enters a quieter period and provides our to team with some time to rest, reflect and recharge. I will be doing the same but also using the time to make some adjustments and improvements to ensure that come September we are ready to go again and serve our partners with a fantastic service once more.   Schools' out for Summer An extremely busy time has now concluded for our mentors, we have a period where we were [...]

Now all students have returned from their holidays our 121 mentoring sessions have resumed, our mentors bridge the gap between those students who have become disengaged or require additional support and the school. Here are the needs of those students that we are meeting with our sessions. In Conversation with Young People How We Work Every week our mentors at TWMAD are holding many conversations with young people. Naturally, they all listen carefully and do their best to comfort, guide and advise them. Our hope is that this will help them to understand things more, make better decisions, or to see [...]

Here is a little summary of how TWMAD prepared and contributed towards the Holiday & Food programme (HAF) this summer with our holiday club Youthtopia. Youthtopia is all about creating opportunities for children to feel supported, have fun and to enjoy as many positive experiences as possible. We had an amazing time.   Our Splendid Summer More recently the school holidays for TWMAD have been spent focused on developing and growing Youthtopia which is our exciting holiday club for children. TWMAD works closely with our partners at the DoubleTree Hilton who provide a stunning venue and facility. Youthtopia is our contribution [...]

Discuss When working in schools, our team takes time to meet up listen and discuss the challenges the schools face in assisting their students to reach the required performance levels to help them to get the very best results from their education as possible. We discuss their enthusiasm for school and learning, concentration levels, school performance, confidence levels, behaviour referrals and any external issues which may also impact upon their school life. Assess The discussions held provide TWMAD with valuable insight into the pupils who they are considering for our mentoring services. We then decide which TWMAD service would be the [...]

Following on from this article about the the increase of online sexual abuse against children in Staffordshire, and hearing lots of comments from the young people I work with who in some cases have thousands of friends, hundreds of views, and comments across various social media platforms. It got me thinking about the actions that I take as a parent to try and help my daughter to make sensible use of social media. The set up that we have with her, despite it at times making me her public enemy number 1 works really well. So I thought I would [...]