Training for Mentors

Learning Mentors, Peer and Adult Mentors

We consider that the most ethical approach when working as a Mentor is that of "doing with not doing to".

Details of our various Mentor Training programmes are set out below. Details of our latest project within the NHS can be viewed on our News/Articles page.

Our Solution Focused Peer Mentoring Programme was recently implemented in Hertswood School, Hertsfordshire. This joint programme organised by the school and the police under the direction of PC Sue Taylor and Lynn Berry has proved very successful, especially for under-achieving boys who were the target group. This has been been extended to include The Business Mentoring Group where members of the business community have been recruited by the school and trained by the Consultancy to work to the Solution Focused ethos.

Radio 4 visited the school to talk to the Mentors and Mentees and this can be heard by clicking the link in the feature on the right of this page - headed Radio 4's You and Yours.......

PC Susan Taylor with the mentors of Hertswood School, the first school in the country to implement Eileen Murphy's Peer Mentoring programme.

Mentors and Peer Mentors from Social Care, Education, Prisons and Probation are trained to work collaboratively with the Mentee in order to highlight the Mentee's full potential. This programme has also been implemented by Local Authorities who wish to achieve better outcomes from their POSITIVE ACTIVITIES SCHEMES.

Solution Focused Mentor Training

The principles of the approach:

A collaborative worker in the process of change and achievement rather than prescriptive experts.

The Mentee is the expert of their lives, their resources, their goals and past achievements.

The Mentor's expertise lies in establishing the goals of the client, eliciting resources and strengths of the client.

Mentees are more motivated to achieve goals which they have themselves identified.

The Mentor can instigate change by the language they use during 1:1 sessions and in Groupwork.

The Mentor is interested in the client's current life, what works for them, their coping strategies, their current goals rather than highlighting weaknesses and past failures.

We encourage conversations to establish the personal strengths of the Mentee; a search for exceptions to problems and an investigation of successes. It is the Mentee's expertise that is harnessed in the work towards change and achievement.

In these conversations - that work in partnership with the Mentee's socio-economic, ethnic and family culture - Mentees are helped in real ways to achieve change in keeping with how they live their lives.

"Conversations for change" are effective by subtley inviting the Mentee to engage in conversations about tomorrow's goals with the Mentor acting as a conduit between the Mentee and the goals that need to be achieved.

Leicester City Council have trained their Learning Mentors in The Solution Focused Approach to Preventing Disaffection & Exclusion Training course. Feedback from Leicester EiC and others can be seen on our Evaluations page http://www.brief-therapy-uk.com/evaluations.php

Utilising the skills of Young Mentors as part of Positive Activities Scheme



Young Mentors being trained in Liverpool

Both Liverpool City Council and Walsall Borough Council have commissioned our Solution Focused Mentor Training Programme as part of their POSITIVE ACTIVITIES SCHEME to train young people aged between 15-19 to work directly with children from across the Borough as part of the Council's Summer Reloaded activity scheme (Positive Activities Scheme).

The activities were attended by children from across the Borough, some were referred directly from Social Services. Council staff, who also attended the training, provided constant support as "Troubleshooters" for the Mentors with the Team here providing weekly on-site Group Supervision for the Mentors in their hands-on work. An evaluation by Liverpool University is available on application to the Consultancy. Contact info@brief-therapy-uk.com