Facilitate Coaching and Mentoring

Facilitate coaching and mentoring in health and social care or children and young people’s settings. When working in a care a setting it is important that I carry out professional supervision. During the induction process as part of them management team I will talked to the team about the purpose of supervision and why it takes place. During the first six months of employment at Genus care, carer’s are on probation and will be supervised twice during each month. I do this as part of the company policy and in order to fully support the individual needs and development of the new team member. After this period has passed supervisions go to once a month and continue throughout the rest of their employment. During supervision as part of the management team it is part of my role to develop relationships and environments that enable the team to work together and respond to change. The aim for me is to achieve and get the best results from my team by having common goals, common values, the right structures, and continuing training and development.

The focus of supervision is to monitor work with individual service users, support and professional guidance and to identify training and development needs of individual team members. The purpose of supervision is often looked at as a legal requirement set out by legislation and a negative thing which takes place within companies. The national minimum standards, Standard 27 Supervision and Support states that Service users benefit from well supported and supervised staff. It is the responsibility of management team and myself that ensures that all staff receive the support and supervision they need to carry out their jobs. I attended training to be able to supervise my team. The team have regular, recorded supervision meetings at least once every month with either myself or another senior/manager in addition to regular contact on day to day practice. Also the team have an annual appraisal with the house manager to review performance against job description and agree career development plans.

Kadushin’s model of supervision talks about the work of John Dawson (1926) who draws on three types of supervision types firstly the Administrative- this is the promotion and maintenance of good standards of work, co-ordination of practice with policies of administration, the assurance of an efficient and smooth-running shift. Educational – the educational development of each individual worker which draws out the strengths they have to offer and encourages them to use and realise them when working on shift with others. Supportive – the maintenance of healthy supportive working relationships, and getting along with other colleagues to achieve the best possible results. The Performance Management Cycle is a management strategy that helps to correctly and professionally supervise individuals. It considers interaction with employees when they first join the company as well as including ways to keep staff motivated, developed and invested in the company.

The management cycle is designed to help employees reach their full potential at work: Goal setting At the start of the review period, the manager should take the time to set SMART goals with employee. These must be Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-framed. Learning there should be lots of opportunities for employees to learn over the review period. Learning can take place in many ways, not just through offsite training courses. Employee Development Discussion about short term and long term career plans with employees, so that the company can invest now for the future. Not all employees want to get on the career ladder, but most would appreciate some form of change to keep them motivated and challenged.

Feedback Employees often wish to receive feedback about their performance. Look out for opportunities to give positive feedback. Meet with your employee on a regular basis to talk about how they are getting on and ask if anything is bothering them.

Coaching involves an employee being supported by his/her manager to clarify and achieve a specific goal. The employee owns the process so coaching can only occur when the employee is willing to participate.

Mentoring involves a manager passing on his/her knowledge and expertise to an employee. Typically, the employee has a mentor who is at management level but not directly involved in his or her work area, so that issue s can be discussed in an impartial and confidential manner.

Employee Appraisals All the activities mentioned above should take place on an ongoing basis. The formal appraisal interview, normally held on an annually, is a great forum to discuss progress in each of these areas.

The main difference between a Coach and a Mentor is that, the mentor has a deep personal interest, personally involved for example a friend who cares about the person and the long term development. Whereas a coach develops specific skills for the task, like challenges and performance expectations at work. As a coach I will often focus on an individual’s performance and will have a specific agenda i.e. time management. I will select a goal and tell the individual how they can achieve it in order to get the best results. When in the house as a senior care worker I am always viewed as a coach and will guide new team members through their probation by showing them how to deal with situations and tasks on a day to day basis within the home.

As a mentor I focus on the individual, often there is not a set agenda, tasks are self selected and there is more self learning and guidance rather than one to one learning. Being a mentor there is no real time scale and often I will remain with the individual through-out their career. Within Genus care the manger is often seen as the main mentor as he is seen as the most experienced member and can offer support and guidance when not actually being there to show you. To the newer team members I will act as a mentor as I often am the first people they come into contact with on shift and build a relationship with through advice and support. When working with others both Coaching and mentoring can offer great ways to support individuals and help them achieve the best results in their personal development as well as for the company. In terms of personal development, both coaching and mentoring are seen as helping activities/ strategies but have very different ways of working and outcome.

Coaching is an important growth area for careers and is very important for company development. Mentoring has a lesser use in many organisations but within care is still seen as fundamental in individual development. Both Coaching and mentoring require trust, empathy and encouragement. Both offer support and attempt to remove the fear of failure. Both work to draw positives from negative experiences. The mentor or coach also endeavours to be an inspirational role model. So despite their different focuses, timescales, and brandings, both coaching and mentoring can be of great support to individuals throughout their career. During supervision I ensure that a lot of the mentoring tasks take place however it is an opportunity to identify individuals’ needs and where coaching would be appropriate. I feel that coaching and mentoring is highly promoted through-out the company and plans/ strategies are built in to develop carer’s individual needs. I will discuss and address things like time management and relationship building with the team.

Advice is giving out and goals that the carer has specific input in are set. There is always an open door policy within the home, staff are made aware during the induction process who their senior workers are and how they can access them for coaching. During the induction and probation period of employment the manger also explains to new team members that they can contact him or speak to him at any time for guidance and mentoring. During supervision and interaction with team members I am able to identify the key needs of the individual and if coaching or mentoring would be something that would help with their development.

I often research and look into key areas of the individuals practice and pull out goals that need to be improved on. By discussing this with the member of staff targets are able to be set and depending on how these targets get met identifies to me if they need more coaching or mentoring. With this solution focused approach they member of staff is able to identify their own weaknesses and together we are able to fix them and produce a more effective way of working that produces the best results for the home.