Mentoring in the workplace and networking with mental health peer workers

By Darren Stones

Been an interesting week where studying a new course, mentoring and networking has provided some new opportunities.

Mentoring in the workplace

This week I have been busy studying the compulsory elective unit TAEDEL404A - Mentor in the workplace as part of the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment course im doing at Moreland Adult Education in Coburg, Melbourne. Developing an entire Mentoring Plan from scratch and facilitating it with a mentee has been a good challenge, and the part I like about this is that you can actually do this in your own workplace in a real work environment.

The Mentor in the workplace unit has provided me with an excellent opportunity to get creative within the set guidelines of the course, and being able to mentor someone in my office has been a good experience. The mentee and myself have successfully completed two of our three sessions of mentoring, and we have another session scheduled for early next week.

My mentoring assessment task has to be submitted to our course facilitator for assessment in a few weeks. Each mentoring session has to be specially designed, implemented and then critically assessed by the mentor, and this is all documented as evidence of proof that is required for assessment.

Consumer Workforce and Mutual Support Day

On Wednesday 18 July, 2012 I attended in the Consumer Workforce and Mutual Support Day, which was hosted by the Victorian Mental Illness Awareness Council VMIAC in Brunswick, Melbourne. VMIAC Information Officers Dominic and Bill invited me to the support day as I had expressed to them my interest in peer work and wanting to network with peer workers.

The day kicked off at 11.00am where we enjoyed a Panel Discussion for one hour, and each of the 30 people in attendance introduced themselves and said a little about what they do.

At 12.00pm we enjoyed lunch for one hour, and this was an excellent opportunity to network with people working as mental health peer workers.

The mutual support session commenced at 1.00pm where peer workers were able to discuss various industry issues that they deal with in their roles as peer workers. The session finished just before 3.00pm and we all seemed quite satisfied with meeting new friends.

I'd like to share a photograph from my recent visit to New South Wales. The photograph features Iandra Castle, which is located at Greenthorpe in the central-west of NSW.

Iandra Castle, Greenthorpe, New South Wales
Photo: Darren Stones