Tehmi is currently in charge of the mentoring scheme. She can be contacted here

The mentoring scheme is organised in conjunction with Time Together, a nationwide project that co-ordinates Refugee mentoring schemes.

TIME TOGETHER & CROSSING BORDERS

Establishing Partnership work

Crossing Borders is a volunteer mentoring scheme run by medical students at Bristol University. In the past Crossing Borders (CB) worked with the Refugee Clinicians Programme (a voluntary organisation set up to support refugee clinicians to re qualify), to match refugee clinicians with student clinicians at the University; to provide advice, guidance and practical support to refugee clinicians that were re qualifying in their particular profession. In particular mentors were able to help clinicians with PLABS exams (re qualification exams for clinicians operated by GMC) and ILETS (English) exams.

The Refugee Clinician (RCP) programme is however now finished, while the Crossing Borders scheme is operating at the University and actively recruits members to work with clinicians. While CB has matched some mentors with clinicians, there is now a shortage of mentees and no process to recruit them. CB therefore contacted Time Together (TT) to see if

a) Refugee Clinicians could be recruited to work with mentors

b) Mentors (and mentees) could register with Time Together to provide structure, support and training for volunteers

Partnership with CB will offer benefits to both organisations and help develop the work of both schemes, different roles can be assumed by both organisations with respect to recruitment, training, support and matching. These and other issues to consider are listed below in a SWOT analysis: -

Strengths

• CB can provide mentors
• TT can train mentors
• CB volunteers have a strong focus to their mentoring
• CB can provide support to mentors
• CB & RCP has been successful in past and provides valuable service

Weaknesses

• CB volunteers are limited by terms in which to meet mentees therefore may not be mentoring for 12 months / 5 hrs each month
• CB has no process to recruit mentees
• Students may be confused by partnership roles
• CB is historically set up to assist clinicians, not other students/mentees
• The ‘need’ is based on availablility of mentors not mentees
• There is no process to find refugee clinicians for CB or TT
• TT does not have links with refugee clinicians groups et

Opportunites

• TT can register mentors (and potentially mentees) from CB and record matches and outcomes
• CB will benefit from TT structure, process, support and training
• TT could help CB by fulfilling the role of the RCP and finding mentees
• CB mentors can benefit from other TT opportunities eg Socials, training
• Contact with RCP director is ongoing with CB
• Mentors could agree to volunteer over more than one year to meet TT meeting requirements
• TT could provide professional support and development assistance to CB
• CB could expand their remit to help students be matched with other mentees – those wanting to work in medical field for example
• TT could recruit mentees from RCP contacts

Threats

• CB mentors may not complete the necessary mentoring time / number of meetings each month required by TT process
• Finding refugee clinicians may be time consuming and unsuccessful
• Meeting and training mentors/mentees may be problematic
• Setting up a referral process from RCP info may be ambitious – concentrating resources on just clinicians

Conclusion

Time Together is willing to run a training session for student mentors and would like to establish a mutually beneficial working relationship, to help develop the work of Crossing Borders, encouraging more students to volunteer and improve outcomes for more refugees. Time Together will register mentors from the University and match them with appropriate referrals (clinicians) and will also research the opportunity with RCP to gain their traditional referrals of refugee clinicians. Ultimately training them as mentees and setting up meetings with Crossing Borders to find a match. It would be advisable to set up a series of regular meetings with Crossing Borders to work out this process and evaluate it.

It will be necessary for Crossing Borders to consider the highlighted points above, especially in respect of TT structure. It will be very useful for Crossing Borders to contact RCP and explain the mutual plans to continue the Clinician mentoring scheme, to help establish how exactly RCP have operated and inform TT. With all this in place hopefully the work of CB and TT will expand to improve all outcomes.