Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Mentoring
Are you thinking about starting a parent mentoring program at your organization? Or building on to an existing program? You’re in the right place!
This guide will help you do just that. It draws on our many years of experience with P2P mentor programs and our collaboration with other health care organizations in P2P program development.
What exactly is P2P mentoring? And how can this guide help you to plan a new program or revise an existing one? Click on each question below to explore the answers to these frequently asked questions.
P2P Mentor programs in clinical settings offer opportunities to provide unique forms of support, distribute information, and educate parents of children with a chronic disease or condition. Peer Mentors can also help parents to develop self-management skills in health care settings, and provide important information to health care teams about parent needs and perspectives. P2P mentors are a low-cost work force whose contributions and services can be impactful to the family experience as well as care team functioning.
Peer mentors are typically veteran parents of children with chronic or complex health conditions. They share their experiences and navigational strategies with parents of newly diagnosed children. Peer Mentors also have a role with parents who have been in the health care system for many years. There are always new challenges to meet and new skills to learn.
At the heart of all P2P mentoring is the support that an experienced parent gives to another faced with new challenges. This support is based in inherent empathy of a shared experience.
Parent mentor programs can start very small as the vision of a single parent and provider. Or a program can be the vision of a team with a goal to serve families in multiple service lines, clinics, and the community.
Smaller programs are at the heart of family centered care. Support and information are provided by the mentor aimed at helping families engage in partnerships with their providers.
Larger programs also encompass this belief in family centered health care and have grown their services over time, but they also seek ways to provide services that are efficient and optimized for impact. Continuous improvement and innovation are core values in the larger P2P mentor program.
No matter the size of your program, this guide draws together best practices in matters related to program design, operations, evaluation, activity and outcome tracking, regulations and compliance, managing collaboration, and many other considerations.
As the role of the Peer Mentor has been embraced by pediatric health care, there is a demand for more structured, accountable programs. The Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health has awarded 4 grants to support the development of the Parent Mentor Learning Collaborative, a consortium of members that has evolved since its inception. The original Collaborative was comprised of California pediatric hospitals and clinics. Their early work expanded to include pediatric hospitals from across the U.S.
The Parent Mentor Learning Collaborative has:
- Identified and defined a range of P2P program approaches
- Identified and refined essential building blocks of P2P mentor programs like mentor recruitment, training, supervision, and pairing with peers
- Established a set of recommended standards for P2P mentor programs, including best practices within each essential building block
The achievements of the Collaborative, together with the Stanford Children’s Health model P2P Mentor program, led to the creation of this guide. It will help you design or refine a P2P mentor program that rests on the standards established by the Collaborative while also meeting the unique needs of your institution.
Whether you are just starting out, or already have peer mentoring in your organization, creating a strong and effective program is a multi-faceted and iterative process. We’ve created the P2P Mentor Support Guide to help your planning process. It includes online content and in-person consulting with advisors from Standford Children’s Health. Its tools, progress tracking, and in-depth resources will help you move efficiently through your P2P program planning. It has everything you need to craft a clear and cohesive program plan – the essential blueprint that captures and organizes your vision, goals, objectives and expected outcomes of your P2P Mentor Program.
The guide includes:
- Clear instructions, expert tips, and multimedia learning.
- Access to invaluable in-depth analyses of various options in program development.
- Connection with a coach from Stanford Children’s Health who has many years of experience in P2P mentor programs.
- Opportunities to connect with other members of the Parent Mentor Learning Collaborative.
The guide is organized in four parts:
- Introduction: Start here to learn about the potential of P2P Mentor programs for your organization and complete an assessment of your organizational readiness.
- Foundations: Translate your vision and goals into a coherent plan that defines the WHY, WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, and HOW of your mentoring program.
- Operations: Use tools to build and scale a program with focus on your people and processes—including recruiting, screening, training, supervision, documentation, and team integration.
Evaluation: Gather relevant evaluation information and interpret data to help drive continual improvement in your P2P program.
Let’s get started! Click on Introduction below to open the guide.