Street Mates, School Mates, Health Mates

The Street Mate programme was first operated by Liverpool Youth Service in 2005/06.
This is a peer mentoring programme that involves the recruitment of 16-19 year olds as Street Mates. 

Street Mates support children aged 8-12 years into a range of positive sports, health and youth programmes.
In the first year we appointed 49 Street Mate.  

Street Mates encourage positive relationships and children's participation. Street Mates are appointed from
July - March 31st and work 6 hours a week after school and 25 hours during school holidays.

The Street Mate programme aims to:-

• Engage children in youth and play activities.
• Employ young people as positive role models.
• Increase young people's involvement in sporting activities.
• Provide advice and guidance to children.   

Liverpool Youth Service has received funding from Liverpool Children's Fund and Neighbourhood Renewal Fund to operate the Street Mate programme.

Young people appointed as Street Mate take part in a dedicated training programme before the summer designed to equip them with the relevant skills for working with children, building relationships and running games, sports, arts etc.  

The real work began at the start of the summer holidays when placements begin in host centres.

The Street Mate programme has been so successful we have since operated two additional programmes
School Mates and Health Mates.  

The School Mate programme was designed to support young people during the transition from primary and secondary school.  Using the same model with young people aged 16-18 years. The Health Mates peer mentoring programme was designed to support health lifestyles of children aged 8-12 years. 

Read a view from a Street Mate.


Schoolmates 2006
An evaluation report produced by Liverpool Children and Young Peoples Participation Unit.

2006 Evaluation Report in PDF format (PDF [529.7Kb]. Download time 2 minutes 3 seconds based on a 56k modem. Will open a new browser window.).