Parent-to-Parent Mentoring: Oxfordshire's Pioneering Buddy Scheme for Adopters

Abstract

Parent mentoring schemes have been found to be successful in providing peer support for families with young children in times of need. Parent mentors can often be a more acceptable form of help to fellow parents than professionals. In response to a request from local adoptive parents and following the establishment of a parenting skills training programme for all its adopters, Oxfordshire County Council, in partnership with Parentline Plus, have pioneered a parent mentoring scheme that has been tailor-made for adopters and uses trained adoptive parents as ‘buddies’ to newer adopters. Liz Gilkes and Louise Capstick report on how the scheme was set up and run as a partnership between an adoption agency and a local service provider. The buddy scheme was evaluated by means of a questionnaire and was found to be effective in providing the type of support requested by new adopters. It has now become an established part of the county's adoption support services and is highly valued by those who use it.