Being a mentor

Your mentee will be receiving support from Scope’s Support to Work service. This is a free support programme for disabled people who are looking for paid work in England and Wales.

Mentoring can involve:

• setting goals that can support someone achieve their aims
• developing skills and identifying areas for development
• empowering decision making
• providing guidance and feedback to help personal development
• motivating

1. You will complete a mentor form. We will use this to match you with a mentee. This could be someone who would like to work in a similar field as you. Sometimes we match based on interests and skills. It may take a few months to find a match. We will keep you updated.

2. Once we have a suitable match, you will meet the person and their employment adviser. In this meeting, you will introduce yourself and find out about them. You will discuss what they would like to gain from mentoring and agree guidelines for future meetings.

3. After each meeting, we ask that you return some notes to the team. We will send a template for this.

4. Once you have decided the mentoring relationship has come to an end, please let us know. We will then ask for your feedback to help shape the programme.

5. There may be the opportunity to mentor someone else. If you are interested in this, please let us know.

You could talk about:

• your career journey, life experience and how you got to where you are now
• support available for disabled people in the workplace
• what it is like to work for a large organisation
• feedback and guidance on the person's CV or interview skills

• Mentoring will take place on Zoom or Teams.
• You will have at least 3 sessions.
• Mentoring lasts up to 6 months.

During the matching meeting, you will set guidelines on:

• how often you will meet
• how you will contact each other between meetings.

Please stick to these guidelines.

Content of your mentoring sessions should remain confidential.

We suggest you share your work email address and only use this contact method.

Please let us know if:

• you decide you no longer want to mentor
• when your mentoring relationship comes to an end
• or if you are leaving your place of work

Safeguarding is promoting the welfare of people, protecting them from abuse or neglect. Safeguarding at Scope is everyone’s responsibility.

Before you begin mentoring you will need to complete Safeguarding training.

If you have any safeguarding concerns whilst mentoring, please contact:

Scope’s Designated Safeguarding Lead: Jodi Coxill-Moore on 07436 562254

or Scope’s Safeguarding team

Plan your sessions.

Ask questions to get to know the person. Some questions you could ask are:

• What are your career goals?
• Where would you like to be in 1, 2 or 5 years?
• What motivates you to do what you do?
• What are your strengths?
• What challenges are you facing right now that you feel comfortable to share?

Go at a pace your mentee is comfortable with.

Share your experiences. This could be:

• your previous career experience
• activities or interests
• educational background

Share your thoughts and ideas.

Offer encouragement.

Review progress together.

As mentoring comes to an end, use your final session to:

• recap what you have covered in the sessions
• reflect on what the person has learned
• discuss future plans
• ask about any further support needs

Scope has a range of support including:

Support to Work is a free support programme for disabled people who are looking for paid work in England and Wales.

Free helpline

Online community space to talk about work

There is free mental health support available, including:

• Shout, a free, confidential, 24/7 text support service for people struggling to cope and needing mental health support.
• The Mix, free, confidential support for people under 25 via online, social, mobile and message boards.

If someone needs support with something else, please encourage them to get in touch with their adviser.

Are you going to keep in touch?

We recommend using LinkedIn for this.

The team will be in touch to ask for feedback on your time mentoring.

Contact the team if you have any questions or concerns about mentoring.

Please provide feedback on the document provided after each session. This enables us to see how things are going and offer support if needed.