Adult siblings who have a brother or sister with a disability. We also welcome siblings-in-law, cousins, and other second-generation caregivers.
Mentees of all ages and experience levels are looking for support from mentors. Mentees may want to discuss complex decisions surrounding things like school and work. Or they may be experiencing a significant change in life that now requires a change in their level of involvement in their sibling’s care and/or to do additional future planning. Finally, some mentees join the program with less specific goals in mind, but rather they simply want to feel connected to others with whom they can relate in order to reduce their sense of isolation.
Mentors join the program and volunteer their time for a variety of reasons and bring a diverse skills set. They are often siblings who have gone through challenges and life changes in regards to their sibling and are particularly inspired and motivated to share their experience and what they learned with others. Being a mentor can also be mutually beneficial, as peer-to-peer support can often provide reciprocal benefits including self-reflection.
Peer-to-peer mentoring can provide a wide variety of benefits for siblings and is a valuable complement to other avenues of support offered by organizations and professional agencies. Mentees in past programs have report reported an increase or significant increase in their level of awareness of these specific topics; - Creating a home for their sibling, - Working with natural supports for their sibling and building a support network, - Understanding behavioural and emotional challenges of their sibling, - Finding and maintaining employment for their sibling, - Ensuring meaningful contributions for their sibling (valued roles), - Finding mental and emotional support for themselves and their sibling.
There are five specific roles that a mentor plays. Sometimes a peer mentor spends more time in one role than in the others; it all depends on what kind of support the mentee is seeking. These roles include:
- Support - A peer mentor listens attentively, provides encouragement, and builds a trusting relationship.
- Learn - A peer mentor asks questions to help the mentee gain clarity on the situation, helps identify their unique strengths or empower them to take action.
- Share - A peer mentor shares their own lived experience and gives real life examples. Sharing stories of balancing care with self-care, ways of coping, learning from situations and asking for help can be a great support.
- Inform - A peer mentor can share experience and guidance towards reliable information about developmental services or other issues of housing, employment, agency support and health services.
- Plan - After listening to a mentee and helping identify their strengths a peer mentor may support a mentee to set goals and make plans.
Although the mentor will take the lead, the mentee plays a very important and active role in the overall outcomes of the mentorship. It is the responsibility of the mentee to identify and share with the mentor the topics and issues that are important to them. Their needs will help direct the conversations and any subsequent goal-setting or planning. Their goals and plans may be specifically related to the ways they support their sibling or they may be more personal in nature such as developing healthy boundaries to maintain a sense of self or creating more time to improve their personal health and well-being.
From start to finish the program is 8-months long and you should connect with your match six to eight times. Mentor training is an additional 6-8 weeks before the program starts.
No - mentors and mentees will be matched up based on key criteria that we review during the application process. If you have a mentor in mind that you would like to invite to be part of the program, that’s great! They will just need to complete the free mentor training.
It’s free!
