Patient or carer mentor for our Executive team

Becoming a patient or carer mentor for our Executive Team

As part of our drive to make sure that we hear the voice of our service users and carers throughout our organisation, our Executive Team are looking to work with patient or carer mentors to better understand their journey and the impact of the decisions they make on your lives.

To support this, we are looking to recruit a group of patients and carers who could be potential mentors. The role involves meeting (either virtually or face to face) with an Executive from the trust on a regular basis (your mentee), helping them understand your experience of receiving care and services and how their decisions can impact on this.

We are looking for patients and carers who can offer our Executives a view of what it means to experience services or what it means to provide care to someone experiencing them.  Ideally, you will have experience of receiving care from a number of different services, not necessarily those delivered by the trust, and be able to talk about the quality of your experience in relation to the care and treatment you have received or supported someone to receive.

What you need to know

The purpose of this role is to help our Executive team to develop their knowledge, understanding and insight of what it means to be a patient or carer receiving services. Whilst you may share with them some of the issues of poor quality care you have received, the relationship is not intended to be one where they are there to fix individual problems, though this may happen on occasion.

As part of the conversations you have, you may be sharing sensitive information about your experience of care and your mentee may also share sensitive information with you. It is important that this is a safe space and that both parties respect the confidentiality of the conversations being held.

Where and how you meet will be agreed between you. It may be that you would feel more comfortable if you are joined by an interpreter, carer or someone else and this will also be agreed between you and your mentee. There is no fixed model for how the mentoring relationship will work, this will be decided between you and your mentee, but it is likely to involve regular conversations and meetings, or you may invite your mentee to experience some of the elements of your care with you. This is for you to decide between you.

The trust values you and your time. To support you in being able to take part in this process we offer payment for your time at National Living wage and out of pocket reimbursement for travel.

How to get involved

To make sure that both you and your mentee get the best out of this experience, we carry out a two-stage matching process.

• In stage 1 – we will ask you to complete a brief profile which tells your potential mentee a bit about you and your experience of care.
• In stage 2 – we will share with you profiles of potential mentees who would be interested in working with you. You then get to decide if you are interested in meeting any of them.
• In stage 3 – you will be invited to meet your potential mentee and afterwards you both decide if you want to take the relationship any further. It is really important that both you and your potential mentee are comfortable sharing information and having conversations, so either of you can withdraw from the relationship at any point and, if you are still interested and other potential mentees are available, we will try to match you with someone else.

We do not know how many people will be interested in this opportunity, so will be taking applications on a first come – first served basis until all of our Executive team have found a mentor. Anyone who is interested in becoming a mentor but who does not get matched in this first round has the option to remain on a register and we will let you know when future opportunities become available.

If you are interested in becoming a patient or carer mentor to our Executive team, please complete brief profile below and email it to involve@bdct.nhs.uk or post to Patient and Carer Experience and Involvement Team, BDCFT, New Mill, Victoria Rd Bradford BD183LD.

You can call 01274 228 298 if you want to chat about the role with one of the team and we can also arrange for you to speak to an active patient mentor.

Mentor name:

Mentor profile

How to complete this profile:

• This profile is to help us match you with an Executive mentee.
• It is your opportunity to tell us a bit about yourself and what’s important to you.
• A few lines or key points under each question is fine.
• It’s only the matching team and the potential mentee who will see your profile. It will only be used to help the matching process.

What I am looking for from this mentoring relationship

1. What I hope to gain from this relationship (why do I want to do this?)

Who I am……

2. How I’d describe what involvement I have with healthcare (am I a carer? A patient? What services am I in touch with? Am I new to treatment or do I have a long experience of receiving care?).
3. What makes my heart sing?
4. Three things you wouldn’t necessarily know about me by looking at me.