An update on our peer mentor project and co-production groups
Published: Monday, April 22, 2024
We are pleased to welcome Rachel and Jayne who are our new Family Peer Support Workers. Rachel and Jayne are both experienced adoptive parents and are bringing their lived experience to this role. Our wider vision is for Rachel and Jayne to mobilise a community of peer mentors who will be able to provide peer support to our prospective adopters, and also adopters beyond the adoption order. We envisage that this will be in the form of 1 to 1 support, through participation in AEM training delivery, and through connections with schools. We will be developing a programme of support for anyone who is interested in becoming a peer mentor including training and supervision. If you are interested in joining us on this exciting venture please contact Vicky Pike at victoria.pike@adoptioneastmidlands.nottscc.gov.uk.
We are continuing to run our co-production groups in Education and Complex Trauma. In our Education group we are looking at identifying parents who might be interested in becoming education specific peer mentors. Please contact us at education@adoptioneastmidlands.nottscc.gov.uk if you are interested in getting more information about this or would like to join the education co-production group.
Our complex trauma group have spent time with Bethan our speech and language therapist and have created a leaflet designed to support class teachers and schools with thinking about the speech and language needs of your children. This will be available for you to access on our support hub very soon. If you are a parent of a child with complex trauma needs and would like to join us, please contact Vicky Pike (victoria.pike@adoptioneastmidlands.nottscc.gov.uk).
We have begun a new co-production group for parents of Teenagers, and this group is currently being led by Adoption UK. If you are a parents of a teenager and are interested in meeting with other parents of teens and supporting us to develop our youth offer, our third session is due to take place on Tuesday 14th May at 7.45pm virtually. If you would like to enquire about our youth offer please contact youthconnect@adoptioneastmidlands.nottscc.gov.uk.
We are hoping to run some early movement groups led by our occupational therapists with young children as part of our Multi Disciplinary Team Offer. If there are any parents who have knowledge around sensory regulation and would like to become involved in supporting parents in these sessions as peer mentors please contact Vicky Pike (victoria.pike@adoptioneastmidlands.nottscc.gov.uk).
Finally, we would like to take the opportunity to say thank you to Kirstie, another of our experienced adopters, who sits on our strategic Multi-Disciplinary Team Group meetings to ensure the voices of adopters are heard, and who is also working hard alongside other adopters to develop a peer led workshop about adoption in the first year. This is designed to support prospective adopters who are at the matching stage to think about the early stages of placement and provide support. If you are interested in supporting this please contact Vicky Pike (victoria.pike@adoptioneastmidlands.nottscc.gov.uk).
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