Elevate | Life-skills & mentoring for care-leavers in London

Sign up to our Elevate programme for care-leavers in London, to learn life-skills in cooking, networking, C.V. and personal statement writing, and work with a student mentor to help unlock your future goals and ambitions

Chi Chi’s Young Minds and AccessHE are excited to once again be running Elevate – a monthly mentoring and life-skills programme for care-leavers in the capital.

The life-skills sessions will take place in May and June 2025, and the mentoring sessions can be scheduled in flexibly in agreement with your mentor. To see a full list of programme dates, please click here.

During the programme you will discover a range of post-16 education and career pathways, including advice on apprenticeships, higher education, and what it’s like to work at a high-profile organisation. You’ll learn how to network, how to build an online presence, and how to apply to university – if you decide to follow this route.

This is a great opportunity to think about your next steps and to work closely with a matched mentor to help you meet your education and employment goals – all while connecting with others on the course and learning how to cook!

To apply, scroll down to complete a short registration form. The deadline to apply is midnight Wednesday 14th May 2025.

Entry requirements: The programme is for care-leavers living in London, age 16-18 . To take part in the programme, you must be able to commit to the programme dates outlined in the schedules above.

Elevate Programme 2025

Step 1 of 4

About this Form
Please complete and submit this form to register for the Elevate programme.

After signing up, you will receive an email with further details about the Elevate programme.

If you have any questions, please contact the AccessHE Uni Connect team: accessHE@londonhigher.ac.uk

Safeguarding Statement
AccessHE is committed to ensuring the safety of all participants in our online events and in person events. As part of the registration process, you will be asked to agree to our and online safeguarding Terms and Conditions. For more information, please see our Child Safeguarding Policy.

AccessHE will take the following steps to ensure the safety of all young people we work with:

• We will conduct a full risk assessment for all activities.

• We will ensure that for all in person events and activities, the adult to child ratio will be 10:1. Adults can include AccessHE and London Higher staff, as well as staff and student ambassadors from member HEIs and partner institutions

• Before attending any AccessHE event, attendees will be asked to consent to a relevant photo and video consent statement.

• In addition to the London Higher staff code of conduct, staff working with children and young people will:
o Prioritise the welfare for children and young people at AccessHE events
o Follow the AccessHE Child Safeguarding policies and procedures.
o Model good behaviour for the children and young people to follow.
o Challenge all unacceptable behaviour.
o Report all allegations and suspicions of abuse following the AccessHE Child Safeguarding policies and procedures.
o Treat all children and young people fairly without prejudice or discrimination.
o Understand that children and young people are individuals with individual needs.
o Respect differences in gender, sexual orientation, culture, race, ethnicity, disability and religious belief systems between yourself and others, and appreciate that all participants bring something valuable and different to the group/organisation.
Online Safeguarding Statement
AccessHE will take the following steps to ensure the safety of all young people we work with in an online capacity:

• We will seek parental or carer consent to participate in online activities where appropriate

• We will operate a registration process for all online events to ensure participants are aware in advance of session rules, and have received platform instructions as well as online safety information from us prior to the event starting

• We will ensure that the chat/messaging functions of any communication platforms we use are monitored and that measures are in place to prevent young people from being contacted directly, either by other participants or by the meeting hosts

• We will put in place clear and robust procedures to enable us to respond appropriately to any incidents of inappropriate online behaviour, whether by an adult or a child/young person

If you experience or witness online abuse, or have any concerns about your or another young person's online safety during the Elevate programme, you may report these to the AccessHE designated safeguarding lead, Richard Boffey (richard.boffey@londonhigher.ac.uk).
*
- By ticking this box you confirm that you have read and understood the above statements.

1: Personal Information
Name*
First Last
Preferred name
Gender*
Address*
Home Postcode*
ZIP / Postal Code Country
Please confirm your date of birth*
Email*
Where can we send you more information after you've signed up?
Telephone Number*
Please confirm the name of the Local Authority you were looked after by when you left care, or the name of the Local Authority you are currently looked after by:*
Do you have any dietary requirements?
Snack and refreshments will be provided at the life-skills sessions. Please confirm any dietary requirements you have, below.
Do you have any specific requirements?
If you have a disability or any additional needs and require adjustments or any other assistance during the programme, please let us know in the box below. If you'd prefer to discuss any requirements further, please don't hesitate to contact us at AHEuniconnecthub@londonhigher.ac.uk.

2. Carer/Emergency contact details
Please provide details of a carer or emergency contact below. Once registered, we will write to this contact to complete a consent form.
Name*
First Last
Email*
Telephone Number*
Please provide a phone number we may contact in case of emergency
Data Protection*
- If you agree to your information being used in the way outlined below (required to continue), please tick the above box.
AccessHE, a division of London Higher, is a network of London-based higher education providers, schools and colleges. We support under-represented learners to access higher education (HE) and achieve good outcomes once there. We do this through delivering a range of projects such as outreach initiatives for school and college students, and professional development sessions for staff in HE providers.
We are also a partner in the London Uni Connect consortium, which delivers the government-funded Uni Connect Programme in London. Through this we facilitate the delivery of activities and programmes, such as HE taster sessions, mentoring, campus visits, and careers fairs, to prospective students either in school or in community settings.
We collect information about individuals who participate in the Uni Connect events and activities we deliver. We do this for the purposes of monitoring, evaluating and reporting on the effectiveness of this work in increasing rates of progression to higher education. The data we collect also enables us to improve the events and activities. We collect this data under the legal basis ‘Legitimate Interest’ as set out in GDPR under article 6(1)f.
Further information can be found in our privacy policy.
3. Evaluation of the Elevate programme

AccessHE will evaluate the Elevate programme, in order to understand your experiences of it.

In order to do this, we collect and process data you provide when signing up, for example your postcode and your gender. We also collect your feedback on Elevate via short surveys that we ask you to complete at the start and end of courses in the programme, and optional interviews with a member of staff from AccessHE during the programme. This information will help us to understand the effectiveness of the programme on students from different backgrounds.

AccessHE may publish the findings of the research and share the report with reputable and reliable third parties, however any information relating to you will be aggregated (i.e. combined with other user data) and anonymised, and will not be provided in a way which identifies you.

The survey data we collect from you is held until the end of the Uni Connect programme and destroyed after that. The personal data stored on the website will remain there until you contact us to disable and delete your account, or until the end of the programme, whichever occurs first.

To read our full privacy policy, please visit https://www.accessheonline.ac.uk/privacy-policy, and to find out more about AccessHE you can visit our website: www.accesshe.ac.uk.

If you have questions about any aspect of the research, please contact Richard Boffey, Head of AccessHE, at richard.boffey@londonhigher.ac.uk.
Participant consent
Please tick the boxes to confirm you consent to the below:
- I understand that I will be asked about my views on online and in-person outreach activity
- I understand I will be asked about my views about aspects of higher education study before and after certain sessions in the programme.
- I understand that participation in this research is voluntary and that I am free to withdraw at any point by emailing the Head of AccessHE at richard.boffey@londonhigher.ac.uk, without having to provide a reason. Withdrawing will have no impact on my opportunities to participate in future AccessHE projects.
- I understand that the data I provide may be shared in the form of research reports. I understand I will not be identifiable in this research.
- I understand that AccessHE needs to process information about my care status for the purposes of measuring the effectiveness of the Future Focus programme for students from different backgrounds
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Sign up to our Elevate programme for care-leavers in London, to learn life-skills in cooking, networking, C.V. and personal statement writing, and work with a student mentor to help unlock your future goals and ambitions

Chi Chi’s Young Minds and AccessHE are excited to once again be running Elevate – a monthly mentoring and life-skills programme for care-leavers in the capital.

The life-skills sessions will take place in May and June 2025, and the mentoring sessions can be scheduled in flexibly in agreement with your mentor. To see a full list of programme dates, please click here.

This is a great opportunity to think about your next steps and to work closely with a matched mentor to help you meet your education and employment goals – all while connecting with others on the course and learning how to cook!

To apply, scroll down to complete a short registration form. The deadline to apply is midnight Wednesday 14th May 2025.

Entry requirements: The programme is for care-leavers living in London, age 16-18 . To take part in the programme, you must be able to commit to the programme dates outlined in the schedules above.

Elevate Programme 2025

Step 1 of 4

About this Form

Safeguarding Statement

Online Safeguarding Statement

1: Personal Information

2. Carer/Emergency contact details

3. Evaluation of the Elevate programme