Mentors for adolescents with cerebral palsy

CP-Achieve is committed to supporting consumer research partners in their roles. We do this in a number of ways. One way is to offer adolescent and young adult research partners the opportunity to work with a mentor.

Mentors are post-doctoral students and PhD students who work with CP-Achieve, and allied health students. All volunteer their time as they know they will also benefit from the mentor relationship they have with the research partners.

Mentors and research partners work out together how they collaborate, how often they meet, what they work together on and when to stop working together. The research partners set their goals for the mentor relationship. Activities that research partners and mentors may do together are plan for meetings with research teams, prepare research partners' thoughts and responses, and find other information that is needed to help them in their roles.

Our aim with the mentor program is to support research partners to take part in their role with confidence, to value their lived experience of cerebral palsy, and to learn new skills and knowledge.

We have completed research to understand the views of research partners and mentors about the mentor program. We will use what we have learned to improve the mentor program.

Want to know more? Watch our webinar which describes the research and its findings.