Background to the organization
Organization
One Westminster is a volunteering organization in the City of Westminster. They work to support the local community and voluntary sector, and to strengthen and encourage volunteering. They offer volunteer recruitment, development amenities, capacity building support to community establishments and front-line services with professional volunteering based projects tackling community needs.
Background
Since 1996, One Westminster has worked with adults within a well-known council-funded volunteering project, supporting volunteering for people with learning disabilities. This allows home-grown organisations and business to grant people with learning disabilities a chance to volunteer while we assist and mentor them.
Later they realized the need for an alternative scheme which can give extra help to those with learning disabilities in overcoming social isolation, gaining confidence and life skills. This evented in a prosperous pilot project that led the organization launching a new three-year project called Befriending and Mentoring Adults with Learning Difficulties. It builds on the experience of the pilot project as well as the working with People with Learning Disabilities (PWLD) through a volunteering scheme.
Services
They provide information, guidance, signposting and referral services to voluntary and community subdivision organisations to assist the people with learning disabilities or difficulties in their growth, sustainability and improvement. There are community and voluntary sector information throughout online directories and e-newsletters. There is also a volunteer support and placement services where they link up volunteers with volunteering opportunities and provide advice and support around recruiting, training and working. Corporate employee volunteering opportunities where the organization aids those with learning disabilities opportunities in the voluntary and community sector are also provided. They also offer workshops for people with learning disabilities on subjects such as IT skills and preparing them for employment which can also prepare them for volunteering.
Supervisor
The supervisor for my placement will be Joel Hylton who is the Learning Disabilities Befriending and Mentoring Project Co-ordinator. We will have monthly supervisions face-to-face, where we would discuss any difficulties I or the client may be facing, what the plan is with my client, how much progress we have made and to ensure that everything is going well. There will also be group supervision and ongoing communication with my supervisor. Furthermore, I will also be reporting my weekly activity with the mentee.
Type of work
My position will be a Mentor working with individuals over the age of 18 who have been diagnosed with a learning disabilities and are in a place where they have goals that they would like to accomplish, whether it is finding a job, learning how to communicate better with others or even just be able to order a coffee at Starbucks, for example. This is a service where if the client is accepted onto the programme, it is followed by a matching with a suitable Volunteer Mentor, who will be able to provide a one-on-one outreach support. The matching is based on similar interests, personal circumstances, availability and other factors such as health or mobility. Following the DBS and references check, we are required to attended 9 hours of training before we can start volunteering and be matched.
Methods and approaches used
The project aims to decrease isolation, and augment integration and participation of PWLD in the community of Westminster. To accomplish that, the project outcomes are oriented to enhance life, social and employability abilities. They believe that working on skills development will also impact positively in other features, such as confidence, well-being, and independence. They have three main approaches:
To reduce isolation of PWLD by ameliorating life and social skills, confidence and the capability to access services and network within the community.
To promote beneficial participation of PWLD into the community by advancing employability skills including education, training and transferable skills.
To promote participation and well-being of PWLD in the community by encouraging, supporting and referring to volunteering prospects.
However, the approach is tailored to what each client may need, allowing the client to have more control over his or her life. The method is based on providing PWLD a personal Befriending and Mentoring arrangement, personalised to their needs, interests and goals. Each volunteer is matched to a service user, providing one-to-one outreach support as a mentor or 2 hours per week for 3 to 6 months depending on how much time is needed to achieve the goal.
Goals for the supervised clinical work
Aims and Goals
My goal is to gain some experience working with adults who have learning disabilities. Having only worked with children and adolescents, I believe this would be extremely valuable work as well as life experience, I would also further develop my skills in the social and care sectors and improve my career prospects.
Reflection on learning outcomes
Hands on experience is an important factor for an effective education. I feel I would learn a lot about being a successful communicator with people who have learning disabilities such meeting them on their level, helping them learn based on their way of understanding of the world, being consistent and engaging with them in the way that makes them comfortable. I will learn to always put in consideration the age, social circumstances, cultural background and diagnosis when adapting my communication skills to meet their needs but more importantly getting to know the person. Two people with the same diagnosis may need different things and interact in different ways. I will not be directly supervised meaning I will have to learn how to develop my own material and strategies to facilitate learning and conversing.
Furthermore, I will understand the importance of flexibility and responsiveness when interacting with clients, significant others and possibly other professionals. These are things that are better learned and understood in a clinical rather than educational setting. You can learn about how to act professional and how to respond and deal with those suffering from learning disabilities, the do’s and don’ts from books and lectures. However, you only fully understand them when your placed in real life situations where you begin to see that it is not all black and white, that each person is different and what you may have learned in the lectures might not always operate in real life situations.
What I hope to achieve and gain
With this placement, I hope to gain more confidence by allowing myself the chance to try something new, meet different kinds of people, try to understand them better, gain experience and learn new skills. Through mentoring I can challenge myself to accomplish personal goals, practice using my skills and what I have learned from university. Mainly, I hope I am able to succeed in helping them achieve their goals and overcome their challenges, as well as learn new techniques on how to interact with them using a more solution focused method of mentoring, tackling one problem at a time.
Personally, I find great pleasure in helping those in need. Since the 8th grade, I have always aspired to pursue a career in child psychology due to the impact I felt a broken family can have on a child. I know it is only one of many environmental factors in a child’s life. However, CAMPs lecture has taught me that small factors could have huge impacts on children’s’ lives. Mentoring will enhance my career opportunities as I will be gaining work experience which is an important factor since I am planning to apply for my Doctorate Child and Adolescents Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy.
Expected Challenges
I think one of the greatest challenges I might face is how will I set up mutual goals when the mentee wants help but may not know where they are going or what they need. How will I be able to define the parameters and set the goals for the mentoring journey when there is no roadmap. It can either turn into a disaster or an amazing opportunity. It could be a good thing in the sense that I will be helping my mentee discover themselves and aid them in understanding their strongest assets which can be channelled into finding what they are truly passionate about. Another obstacle I worry about is there is a fine line between advising someone to figure it out or telling them what to do. Our jobs as mentors is to help them figure it out without instructing them to do things a certain away but when it comes to people with learning difficulties sometimes you need to tell them how it is done. I think figuring out how to help them without making them feel helpless or incapable will be difficult.
Theory and Practice links
Volunteering-based Befriending/Mentoring care has been proved to be a productive means of addressing isolation, helping disadvantaged people to acquire skills, and ameliorating their general physical and mental health. One Westminster’s experience has shown the unbelievable value of including volunteers, allowing PWLD the chance to engage with people from diverse backgrounds, outside their typical social circle, and potentially stimulating experiences. The diversity of the volunteers’ strengths the project by bringing novel creative ideas and viewpoints.
Active Mentoring is an Active Support style training intervention that aims to promote the engagement of older adults with learning disability at typical community settings. It was found to be effective in increasing participant activity and total engagement but not effective in increasing social engagement (Jones et al. 1999). Chng et al. (2012) found that participants who had a mentor that supported them reported greater activity engagement than those who had assistance from non-mentors. Youths, from seventh to 12th grade, who were mentored were more likely to graduate from high school, they even reported higher levels of self-esteem and higher overall number of positive outcomes than non-mentored youths (Ahrens, DuBois, Lozano, & Richardson, 2010).