Mum2Mum is a befriending service for young mums. We train up volunteers from local churches - women with parenting experience - and pair them with vulnerable mums aged 16-30 to provide consistent, long-term one-to-one support and encouragement. Pairs meet at least once a fortnight, for up to two years and are matched and supervised by a project co-ordinator.
“My befriender has been brilliant- life changing. I am more confident. It’s been really good to have someone to talk to - I’ve never really had anyone to talk to before. "
Activity
Providing one-to-one friendship and support to young mums. This can be anything from visiting them at home for a chat and a cuppa to attending an important meeting together or helping mums engage with groups or access additional sources of specialist help and support - the mums set the agenda so each relationship will look different.
Time
On average it takes around 10 months to set up a project from scratch, from initial exploratory conversations to matching the first mums and befrienders. The training consists of 8 sessions of around 90 minutes. If the church already has great relationships with community and referral partners, the time to set up the project will likely be reduced.
Cost
If the Project Co-ordinator role is undertaken by a volunteer, the total cost of setting up and running a project for 12 months is around £1,040 (around £700/year thereafter).
Partnership
Churches will need to establish relationships with agencies supporting vulnerable families in their community, such as social care and early help teams, health visitors, midwives, schools, and voluntary organisations, so that these agencies feel confident referring mothers to the service.
Support
We will provide initial training (in-person/online/hybrid) for project co-ordinators and for the first cohort of befrienders, and train up the project co-ordinator(s) to be able to deliver future training themselves using our video resources. A comprehensive operations manual is provided, plus leaders' and participant training manuals. Ongoing training and support will be provided by the Princess Project team as required.
Resources
This project needs very few physical resources. If you want to run an in-person training course, you will need a venue for this, and to provide refreshments. You will need a postal and email address for the project, as well as secure storage for confidential files (physical and/or digital).
People
A project co-ordinator is needed to oversee the project. They will liaise with community partners, handle incoming referrals, recruit and train new volunteers, and match and supervise mum/befriender pairs. This role will take around 5 hours/week. We recommend starting with around 5 volunteer befrienders, plus a management committee of at least 3 (including the co-ordinator) to oversee the project.
Replications
Mum2Mum has:
Replications
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