Evidence and Policy
Responding to Evidence
One of the strengths of the mentoring pilot has been the ‘action research’ approach – the ability to respond quickly to evidence of success or weakness to produce the best possible result, with self-evaluation as a continuous theme. The factor driving many changes has been the changing needs and the wishes of the older people who are the participants themselves. Here are some examples of the responses to change in the original pilot:
- Community mentors are trained to engage and encourage people, providing one-to-one support and focusing on self-sustainability; this replaced the planned full-time assessor, who focused simply on signposting people to existing activities.
- Activity groups begun by mentors, for informal, daytime motivation, instead of the first plan to signpost to Adult & Community Learning (ACL) with Learning and Skills Council (LSC) support. For many people, so-called ‘leisure learning’, not recognised by LSC, represents essential skills for coping with daily life.
- Participants’ age range has been extended to include all adults, so that older people can thrive within the context of the whole community and benefit from a range of ages and abilities, on the basis that intergenerational activity builds trust. Participants themselves were keen on this shift of balance: the original brief was 55-plus.
- Outreach in the community has increased as the project matured. Initially mentors brought people into local centres (often the main towns, sometimes the villages). In response to demand, mentors are reaching out further to start groups involving whole communities in order to affect deep-rooted change.
- Instead of traditional dependence on volunteers, mentors in Mid Devon have encouraged ‘volunteer participants’ – anyone who joins or visits a group becomes part of the group, participating and helping however they can; this encourages sustainability and participant ‘ownership’ of the group.
- Consultations occur as informal ‘conversations’ ‘ in the context of regular enjoyable activity, rather than set focus groups, meaning that people who would not normally participate do so and are able to influence local decisions.
- Long-term maintenance of good health in the community has become an important aspect of mentors’ work – simply signposting people to other activities and hoping they will be all right is not enough. Successful independence requires long–term monitoring to avoid decline into ill-health.
- Co-operative working has increasingly become a feature of the project – through shared co-ordination and signposting with other voluntary sector organisations and particularly through representation on GP multi-disciplinary teams. The project belongs not just to Upstream but to the whole community.
