“Mentoring can happen while going for a walk, baking a cake, making art, playing pool – but it can also be sitting and having a conversation. It can really help a young person unpack and offload how they are feeling.”
Counselling, on the other hand, is a listening therapy – a service that Level Two is reinforcing by employing another counsellor and student counsellor just to meet current need. When the pandemic hit, Shez and her team invested in technological infrastructure to provide counselling services remotely. The Youth Hub in the town centre was closed until the beginning of October, and while it opened for a short time for counselling and mentoring sessions, the November lockdown meant it has closed again.