THRIVE Epping
One-to-one mentoring that starts with confidence and ends with a CV, an interview behind you and a real next step.
Epping Forest reads as an affluent district, and the district-level numbers say so too. What those numbers hide are the pockets — estates and neighbourhoods where household incomes are lower, transport is a barrier, youth provision is thin, and young people grow up feeling some distance from services that are technically available to them.
THRIVE Epping is the response to that gap. Delivered by Youth Unity with Epping Forest District Council, it works with young people aged 14 to 25 who are losing their grip on school or college, struggling with confidence and wellbeing, at risk in the places they spend time, or stuck at the point of trying to get into work.
Young people here tell us the same things repeatedly: they want somewhere safe to go, adults who listen without judgement, and help finding a job and planning what comes next. That last one comes up most of all. Most are not asking to be rescued — they are asking for an opportunity and someone to help them take it.
Outreach that comes to you, mentoring that stays with you
Mobile outreach
Detached youth work in the places young people already gather. Trusted adults, informal advice, and pop-up activity — sport, games, podcasting tasters. No sign-up, no referral, no commitment. Turn up or don't.
It is also the front door: a conversation on a Wednesday is the most common route onto the mentoring caseload.
1:1 mentoring
A trauma-informed mentor working with one young person at a time, an hour a session, weekly or fortnightly depending on what suits. Twelve sessions that move deliberately from trust and stability through to employability.
Starts are rolling. Nobody waits for a group to fill up or a term to begin.
Twelve sessions, four phases, one person at a time
The order matters. You cannot ask someone to sit a mock interview in week two if their week is falling apart, so the early sessions build the ground the later ones stand on. The journey moves through four phases.
Engage & baseline
Trust, consent and boundaries, emotional awareness, and coping with the pressure they are actually under. Baseline measures taken.
Build
Resilience, relationships and personal safety, money and independence, and what they want the next few years to look like.
Employability
Work readiness, interview confidence and real pathways into apprenticeships, college, volunteering or work.
Progress & sustain
Youth voice, reflection and recognition, a destination plan and an agreement about ongoing support.
The sequence is a default, not a rule. Someone in crisis early on stays on stabilisation until they are ready to move on, and someone who arrives job-ready is front-loaded into the employability phase. It does not stop at the final session either — we make contact again at four weeks and twelve weeks to confirm where they have landed.
Sessions happen where the young person can actually get to
Community venues across the district — Loughton, Waltham Abbey, Epping and Limes Farm — plus schools and detached settings. Where a neutral or out-of-area location is safer or easier, sessions run from the Youth Unity hub in Romford instead.
- Content can be split across sessions where concentration or additional needs require it
- Safeguarding concerns are acted on the same day, every time
- Independent clinical supervision sits behind every mentor
Young people at the point where things could go either way
- Aged 14 to 25 and living in or connected to Epping Forest
- Losing engagement with school or college, or already out of education
- Not in employment or training, or unsure how to start
- Struggling with confidence, anxiety, isolation or low self-worth
- At risk from unsafe peer groups, exploitation or the places they spend time
- Under pressure at home, or carrying more than they should be
One form, and we take it from there
Referrals come in from a range of routes, and young people can refer themselves. The more detail on the form, the better the match to a mentor.
Health
GP practices, Epping Forest North PCN social prescribers, West Essex Mind and wellbeing partners.
Education
Schools and colleges — pastoral, safeguarding, attendance teams and alternative provision.
Partnership
Community Safety Partnership, council teams, police and voluntary sector organisations.
Self-referral
Young people can fill the form in themselves — or come and find us on a Wednesday in Loughton.
