Sharing Good Practice adult?) and given the opportunity to practise their skills in a safe environment.
• All pupils need to know about the programme and trust it. They need to know how to access the service when they need it and be clear about their, and their mentors, commitment.
• Peer mentors need to be supported – the role can be emotionally draining and it is important that the mentors are given support and supervision on a regular basis as well as ad-hoc opportunities to be able to share anything that is causing them immediate concern.
• Records need to be kept – as with any other school-based intervention, you will want to know how many mentors accessed the service, what the issues they presented with and what they thought of the support they received.
• Mentors need to know how and when to signpost onto other services and how to close the relationship – mentors are not trained counsellors or therapists and sometimes their mentee will need specialised and professional help. Peer mentoring should only last for as long as it is useful and should never allow either the mentor or the mentee to become dependent on the other. So – set clear time frames for review and ensure that the relationship only continues for as long as it needs to.
Yvonne Richards is Training and Development Manager at Kidscape- a charity which works across the world to keep children safe from harm and enable them to fulfil their potential. A qualified teacher with over 20 years’ experience of training, Yvonne has developed BTEC Peer Mentoring qualifications, trains groups of peer mentors and coordinates a peer mentoring project.
Class Time | | Sep- Oct 2017 | 29