Chance UK is a unique charity in the UK that specialises in mentoring programmes for primary schoolchildren with behavioural problems. It was founded in 1995 by a policeman, Chief Superintendent Paul Mathias, who believed that by stepping in early, young children with behavioural difficulties could be given the chance to develop the necessary resilience and confidence to withstand the negative influences around them. Conceived as a crime prevention initiative, it was designed to stop young children in the north London borough of Islington from following older siblings and others around them into crime. It does this by providing positive role models for five to eleven year olds who haven't committed a criminal offence but who, due to a combination of factors including poor social skills, a lack of friends, inappropriate disciplining by parents and a negative attitude to school, have a greater likelihood of developing antisocial or criminal offending behaviour later in life. Children are referred to Chance UK by primary school teachers and, to a lesser extent, by social services and other agencies. Chance UK is emphatically not a befriending organisation. It is geared rather at providing children with a transforming short-term relationship that will encourage positive changes in a child's behaviour.