Three people involved in a mentoring scheme for care leavers will be meeting the Prince of Wales today in a private reception at St James's Palace.

They are all involved in the Admovere project which helps children in care make the tentative step towards independent living, either by helping them move into their own accommodation, enter higher education or by getting a job.

The reception is being held to celebrate the various projects that the Prince in involved in through the Prince's Trust and present them as a showcase of ideas before 40 politicians, including cabinet ministers.

Last month two young people supported by the Admovere project in Kingston-on-Thames were invited to share their experiences personally with the Prince.

Admovere was set up two years ago by Kingston Council's children and family services with extra funding from the European Social Fund.

When that money dried up it applied to the Prince's Trust which gave the scheme £7,000 to put towards the training of mentors.

The scheme has so far trained 27 volunteers to befriend and mentor teenagers in care and was recently highly commended by Government social services inspectors.

It provides a comprehensive range of support services to young people, especially those aged 16 plus and care leavers, and has quickly established a national reputation for the quality of its work and the training of volunteers.

The Prince's Trust set up a mentoring network in 1998 in a £1.1m three-year partnership with the Camelot Foundation a charitable trust which gives grants to voluntary groups working with disadvantaged people aged 16 and over.

There are now about 1,100 mentors in the UK and the idea behind the scheme is to try to keep young people leaving care on the rails and not end up as another grim Government statistic in terms of homelessness, crime, drugs, prostitution and various other social ills in which care leavers seem to feature prominently.

In charge of the Admovere project is Joyce Harvie who, despite all the accolades and expectations, is cautious about blowing the scheme's trumpet too loudly as an answer to all the problems confronting the care system.

"I think the Government believes mentoring is the answer to everything but I don't think so," she told Adoption-net.

"Mentoring is just part of the answer - we complement other services," she said pointing to the important part foster carers play in preparing youngsters with often unstable family backgrounds for life in the adult world.

But there is no doubt that the young people who receive help from the scheme do see it as beneficial both practically and emotionally.

Sam, who is in care and has the support of a mentor, said: "Your mentor only knows what you want them to know. They don't have a file on you and you can talk to them like you would a friend.

It is the very informality of mentoring that the young people involved value in the scheme. For once in their lives which thus far may have been dominated by 'the system' and professionals, there is someone who is there because they want to be, not because they are being paid.

"I know that our conversations are confidential," says Sam, "so I don't need to worry as there are no strings attached. You know they want to meet you, because they are doing it as a volunteer.

"We talk about my personal life as well as practical things like budgeting, my work and we've recently been talking about driving lessons. Having a mentor opens up options that you didn't know you had."

Joyce added: "The volunteer aspect is really important - mentors are there because they want to be there - and they always turn up on time."

Whereas the social workers, with whom these people had been involved with, sometimes for years, would think nothing of turning up late without even an apology, making the young people feel they were just not valued.

The mentors receive training and offer a range of support depending on the needs of the care leaver. This can include support to find employment, training or move into education, emotional support, careers advice, help to move into independent living.

Mentor Tony Evans said: "In an ideal world, a young person has a couple of adults to provide parental support. For those young people that don't have that support, a mentor can step in at a key time.

"A mentor can offer encouragement, and have a different perspective to other people involved in the young person's life through the care system."

Joyce says she gets a wide variety of people involved in the scheme and has been surprised at the amount of interest shown in it since many groups struggle to find people prepared to give up time in their increasingly time-pressured lives to a cause without payment.

"Initially the expectation was that we would train 12 mentors and I thought 'How am I going to find 12 volunteers?'," said Joyce.

She decided to advertise the scheme by targeting libraries and other places were she expected to find people who "were more educated and a bit more nature".

It was a strategy that paid off. In two years she has had 61 inquiries though less than half have made it through the process to become actual mentors.

They tend to fall into two categories. The 23-35 years old who are, perhaps, looking for a change of career, possibly social work and the 45-60-somethings who "want to give something back to society".

Whatever their background they all have to undergo 10 weeks of training for an NVQ in communication skills and have to provide two references and have police checks on their background before they are accepted on to the scheme.

A crucial element of mentoring is the matching process. This requires a degree of flexibility but ultimately, it is the young person who chooses their mentor rather than the other way round.

However, Joyce can decide which mentors profiles to present to any particular person to prevent obvious clashes. For instance, one mentor specified that they could not befriend a person who had been involved with serious crime.

To prevent "inappropriate sexual relationships" the mentors are also matched up according to gender.

"We had one boy who had done an NVQ in IT so we matched him up with a 47-year-old IT consultant from the City." said Joyce who believes that a great strength of the team is that it is all in-house rather than the training going to outside bodies. This way the people co-ordinating the project get a good feel for the mentors involved.

Of the 27 who have been trained for Admovere, she still has 18 on her books - nine have left because of new employment but Joyce is proud that "nobody has left in horrible circumstances".

The mentors are well supported. Joyce, who has a background in youth and community work, makes herself available by mobile up to 10pm, seven days a week. But she has had only five out-of-hours calls in two years.

Every six weeks the mentors meet up for "peer support meetings" and they also have one-to-one supervision, sais Joyce.

And although they are expected to listen to their young charges, they are not expected to be counsellors. They have strict boundaries on what they are expected to offer support - getting a job, getting somewhere to live or going to college.

If a child starts to talk about issues such as sexual abuse they have suffered, then the mentors guide them towards other services that can provide specialised help, advice and support.

The mentors get a flat-rate of £15 a month expenses to cover petrol or to, perhaps, take their young person for a burger or to the cinema. It is these sorts of life chances that many of these young people have so little experience of if they have spent a lifetime in care.

One mentor suggested that he and his young person go shopping in Covent Garden. It may sound a fairly ordinary activity but for a young person in care who has never been out of Kingston, it may as well be a trip to the moon.

The experience, as well as exciting, taught him how to buy a train ticket and gave him the confidence to be able to navigate public transport beyond his home town.

Other young people may have learning difficulties or as Joyce puts it are "a bit slow". One mentor encouraged one such teenager who did not want to go to school to attend her classes with the promise of a McDonald's at the end of the week.

Over 15 months, as well as helping her to attend school, the mentor also assisted the girl in getting a work placement in a local hotel which led to a full-time job.

The council, of course, is flattered that its scheme has twice received royal attention. Grahame Snelling, principal manager looked after and adolescent services, said: "Project staff and children and family services are deeply honoured by the recognition that these two invitations confirm."

But for Joyce, a real sign of success for the scheme will be when one of the teenagers who was referred to the scheme returns - not because they need help but because they want to offer some hope and be a positive role model for children in the boat that they once paddled.