On-going Support Requirements for Music-based Mentors

Music-based mentoring can be a difficult and demanding job. Adequate support for mentors is often a vital part of ensuring adequate support for mentees.

This page is part of a resource pack on Music-based mentoring.

Mentoring can be a difficult job. In supporting mentees with their personal lives mentors are at risk from safeguarding issues, from mentees’ disclosures, from misreading situations. And just from being in the line of fire:

•    "Sometimes I think I'm just a verbal punch-bag, and that's what I'm there for. My mentee can come in and say: "The whole world's shite and I don't want to do it", and just get it off her chest."

Coordinators need to provide safe spaces for both one-to-one and group supervision of mentors, to both support and manage them; and also to provide ongoing, tailored training. Here’s how some coordinators tackle these issues.

• “I supervise every member of staff. We have confidential meetings on occasion and have discussed levels of support at training days. We put in three group steering days per term for sharing problems within the group – going to colleagues for support. I have made sure opportunity and space is available to deal with lump in the throat issues. We have a family approach.”
• “The most useful thing was getting a group of mentors together – people on a shared wavelength with a team spirit on what we are all delivering here. It was more about passing on ethos rather than passing on direct skills.”
• “A pool of 10 mentors, some of them volunteers, receive in-house training including mental health awareness training, workshop leading and music therapy. We have our own handbook adapted from a training book from the local Mind.

And one who was worried about other people’s practices:

• “Some organisations were not felt to be as supportive by mentors. They felt thrown in at deep end. There were things around approach, a lot of it around establishing trust / defining role and managing expectations.”

To make the most of either one-to-one or group supervision, mentors need to be able to reflect on their practice: See Methods: Structured reflective practice. They also need opportunities to meet other mentors.

Mentors need to be supported in their continuing professional development and encouraged to keep developing. Training – for instance in emotional intelligence, equal opportunities, communications skills as well as further music development – may be very useful.

Coordinators, in turn, need time and space to talk with their managers about the issues of running a music based mentoring programme.

What others say:

• “Jean Rhodes, points out: “Even the most dedicated mentors are likely to feel exasperation, ambivalence, anger and regret at various points ... If mentors were told that the road to establishing this connection [between mentor and mentee] could be a tough one – that the adolescents might very well spend the first six months testing them before offering even a shred of appreciation or authentic disclosure – many people would probably examine their motivations and commitment more carefully before volunteering.” (Meier 2008 p29*)

Reference--- *Meier, R (2008) Youth mentoring: a good thing? London: Centre for Policy Studies.