The Life Skills for Care Leavers Training Course for Mentors aims to increase the capacity of mentors/youth workers/trainers to efficiently deal with social, emotional and educational issues with their learners. Simultaneously, it intended to provide them with the necessary training and teaching material to support their mentoring and coaching efforts on the above-listed issues.

It includes the interactive e-learning modules, teaching material and guidelines, step-by-step user guides, resources and tools to use with learners, activities and guidelines, exercise and activity templates, a library of useful links and third-party resources.

The included modules in the Educational toolkit were developed and organized to ensure that the youngsters will benefit from high-quality mentorship and coaching. These modules are:

1. Being a Mentor – Role, responsibilities and limitations
2. Respecting boundaries: Rules of communication and interaction in the Mentoring process
3. Creating rapport and a relationship of trust and respect with the mentee – Empowering and motivating vs. creating codependency and solving a problem
4. Providing Emotional Support and assisting young persons in coping with day-to-day pressures
5. Helping create a future – assisting a young person in the building and putting into action a life project
6. Transferring skills – social, employability, financial and organisational skills and competencies, following the modules and activities of the training for young people.

• Organisational and goal setting skills:
  • • time management
    • effective goal setting
    • resource management
    • planning and putting into action a life project etc.

The primary objective of this training course is to be used in young people's work with mentors.

With its design, we aim to make it as "light" and "fun" as possible, while at the same time ensuring effective and lasting learning outcomes by covering the three broad dimensions of learning: Awareness- Knowledge-Skill.

Because of this, the content of each of the thematic modules is structured as follows:
1. Awareness dimension:

Short explanatory articles, thematic videos, Infogrames, base concepts introduction texts, questions and answers sessions, short quizzes.

2. Knowledge dimension:

Detailed learning modules and how-to articles and videos, case studies, do's and dont's materials in various formats (text, videos, pictures), links to third parties resources, learning materials approaching the subject from multiple points of view, best and worst practice examples.

This section will also have an interactive responsive case-building component, demonstrating the mid and long term consequences of potential decisions and actions a young person takes, developed on several potential life case scenarios, linked to the thematic of each module(for ex. spending all one's money on recreational activities or taking the decision to practice self-restraint and moderation by resisting the temptation).

It also contains links to third-party resources for more in-depth study in case the learner wants to engage with.

3. Skill dimension:

This dimension is composed of step-by-step guides and explanatory articles on how to apply in practice the concepts learned, as well as digital tools for the creation of a personal project such as interactive learning matrixes for SWOT analysis, tasks analysis, pro/con and shortlists, Gantt tables, tasks, time and resource organizers, milestone identifiers, implementation checklists, check-backs, periodic review templates etc. Besides the three thematic modules, the training course will also contain a module on European mobility opportunities for young people, with explanatory guides, how to get engaged step by step guides, the benefits for young people of European mobility, useful links and contacts to get information and support.

As care leavers face significant disadvantages, we believe that engaging this group in European mobility initiatives will have an enormous positive impact on them.

However, the successful integration and completion of mobility projects for young people facing this type of difficulties require a high level of competence and motivation of mentoring and accompanying staff both from the sending and hosting organisations, personalised attention to each individual and their specific needs, as well as adapted and carefully designed missions, approaches, activities and objectives.

Due to these requirements, the inclusion of care leavers in EU youth projects is rare and has higher associated risks, such as having the opposite of the desired effect. For this reason, we believe that close cooperation between European partner organisations and the establishment of quality, safety, and responsibility standards for sending and receiving young people in this situation is required for securing positive experiences and learning outcomes. The current intellectual output will create a toolkit kit for organisations in European cooperation and mobility for young people leaving care, covering the following:

1. Communication and cooperation rules and modalities between sending and receiving organisations before, during and after the lifetime of the mobility

2. Preparation of young people before departure: safety instructions, cultural, educational/vocational and linguistic support

3. On arrival training and coaching procedures for young people, including cultural, cultural, educational/vocational and linguistic support

4. Mentorship and coaching criteria and rules for sending and receiving organisations

5. Designing suitable missions and activities for the duration of the mobility

6. Regulation of learning/working and living conditions for young people with disadvantages participating in European mobility

7. Ethical code for organisations, mentors and young people participating in European mobility

8. Quality approaches for emotional and adaptation support to disadvantaged young people

9. Cooperation and communication regulation for reaction in crisis and unwanted situations

10. Follow up and mentoring after the end of the European mobility.