E-Mentoring aims to raise the achievement levels and ambitions of young people who have the potential to go onto college or university, and are interested in a career in one of the healthcare professions.
Why the Scheme Exists
- To provide guidance, support and encouragement for young people considering a career in the healthcare professions
- To enable young people to find out about college or university first-hand from someone who is already there
- To help young people get the most out of school and reach their full potential.
Who is the Scheme for?
This scheme is aimed at pupils in Year 12 and 13 who have an interest in a career in one of the following healthcare professions:
Podiatry | Occupational Therapy | Sports Science | Psychology | Adult Nursing | Midwifery | Health science
How Mentors are Selected
Students who apply to become a mentor have to undergo a rigorous selection procedure including an interview, two references, and an enhanced Criminal Records Bureau check (police check). Mentors are trained before being matched up with young people. Mentors are supervised by the university co-ordinators.
How the Scheme Works
This mentoring scheme is funded via the Government's Aimhigher initiative and The Brightside Trust. The University of Northampton School of Health works in partnership to offer mentors to young people in a number of schools. Aimhigher Northamptonshire recruit and train students to work with young people.
Contact between the university students and young people (mentees) is by e-mail, via a monitored website. The mentors will contact their mentees by e-mail once a week, to see how things are going. Young people can also contact their mentor via e-mail whenever they have any questions or want to discuss something. Mentoring relationships can last anything up to 12 months, depending on the needs and interest of the young person.
What Do Mentors and Mentees Talk About?
The kinds of topics that can be covered include:
- Chatting about school or other things the mentee might want to talk about (i.e. work or ambitions etc.)
- Planning homework, coursework or revision
- Learning new ways of studying
- Talking about college or university
- Finding out about college courses or careers.
Here are some quotes from young people who had mentors last year:
Resources
A major component to the Brightside e-mentoring scheme is the provision of resources for both mentors and mentees. The mentees will be able to find quality information about becoming a doctor or any other allied healthcare profession. They will also be able to look up the latest information about university admission, fees, costs, accommodation etc.
Mentors will also be able to browse the resources to locate potential journal discussion material and also to find out answers to questions that may have been posed by their mentee.
Security
The following security measures are in place:
- All messages inside the system will be encrypted.
- Steps have been taken to prevent intrusion into the website. This has been incorporated into the way in which the site is hosted, the design of the network and the hardware in place such as firewalls and intrusion detections.
- Minimal contact details are requested from both the mentor and mentee to prevent unnecessary information being on the site.
- University coordinators are given access to a central management system which enables them to see all communication that is occurring between the mentoring pairs at their institution. Brightside recommend that this is checked at least once a week. Mentors and mentees are told that the site in monitored and a log of all communication is kept.
- A filtering function is in place to highlight any potentially inappropriate journal entries. Coordinators are alerted of any journal entries that need checking. Once the journal entry is approved it will then appear in the mentor/mentee journal or if necessary appropriate action can be taken.
Take a look at the website by going to ...
