3.2 Your Activities

Fictional extract. Project figures, quotations and grant details are illustrative.

Delivery model overview

We deliver an integrated, year-round youth work programme in Barking and Dagenham that combines open-access weekly youth club provision, structured trauma-informed one-to-one and small-group mentoring, detached street outreach, and school holiday enrichment. The strands are deliberately connected: detached outreach and school referrals bring guarded young people into a welcoming, non-stigmatising environment; the weekly youth club gives them a safe social space, hot food and positive peer activities; and one-to-one mentoring provides sustained individual support for those facing acute risks of school exclusion, exploitation or disengagement.

Primary services

Strand 1: Open-access weekly youth club

Venue and schedule: Runs every Tuesday evening during term time (5:30 pm to 8:00 pm) at Mayesbrook Park Pavilion, located on the edge of Mayesbrook Park within walking distance of the Becontree and Upney estates.
Staffing and attendance: Led by two part-time qualified youth workers supported by 4 to 6 trained sessional volunteers each week, welcoming an average of 40 young people aged 11 to 17 per session (with around 120 unique young people attending the club over the course of a year).
Session structure and activities:
- Shared hot meal and kitchen table check-in: Every Tuesday session includes a free hot meal prepared together in the Pavilion kitchen, addressing after-school food insecurity while creating a relaxed, stigma-free setting for informal check-ins with youth workers.
- Music production and lyric workshop corner: Portable studio setup where members write, record and mix tracks, supported by a volunteer youth worker with audio production experience.
- Multi-sport and active games: Floodlit 5-a-side football, basketball and table tennis using the Pavilion court and indoor hall.
- Creative arts and themed issue discussions: Youth-chosen workshops covering healthy relationships, online safety, knife-crime awareness, money skills and mental wellbeing.
- Fortnightly boxing fitness partner sessions: Delivered in partnership with Roding Valley Boxing Club, offering non-contact pad work, discipline and emotional regulation coaching.

Strand 2: One-to-one and small-group mentoring

Target cohort and referral route: Designed for young people aged 11 to 16 referred by our two partner secondary schools, the borough’s Early Help service, or identified through our own youth club and detached outreach as being at acute risk of fixed-term or permanent school exclusion, persistent absenteeism or peer exploitation.
Structure and caseload: Matches each young person with a consistent, trauma-informed mentor for a structured six-month mentoring cycle of weekly 45-to-60-minute one-to-one sessions (held either in a private pastoral room at the partner school or after school at Marks Gate Community Centre / Thames Ward Community Centre), reviewed every six weeks against three personal goals agreed by the young person.
Current scale: Supports an active caseload of 15 young people at any one time (approximately 30 to 35 mentored young people per year across two six-month cycles), with a current waiting list of 20 referred young people.