The Magic of Mentoring
Tracks
Virtual Presentations
| Wednesday, December 1, 2021 |
| 4:14 PM - 4:34 PM |
Overview
Ms Simone Allan, Women's Resilience Centre
Speaker
Mrs Simone Allan
Founder/director
The Women's Resilience Centre
The Magic of Mentoring
Abstract
The WRC Resilience Program – We Repeat What We Don’t Repair
Research has shown that the road to recovery from domestic violence requires time. An empathetic community, trusted input from someone who has lived experience, smarts around financial and legal affairs and IT safety are amongst the key enablers for surviving and thriving. Access to centralised, integrated services offering multidisciplinary information and support has been identified as essential by those with lived experience but according to research, this is also one of the biggest gaps today, and a potential area for improvement.
The Women’s Resilience Centre, underpinned by its trauma-informed, person-centred, strengths-based approach embarked, in 2021, on a journey to help fill gaps by designing and building an holistic multi-dimensional program that integrates four pillars of recovery: Capability building focused on financial, legal, safety, IT and life skills; Mental Health and Wellbeing; Peer-to-peer support through a mentoring program and community activities; and Strength and resilience through a clinical resilience component which will draws upon Schema Therapy, DBT and work of Bessel Van der Kolk, Gabor Mate and others on co-dependency.
Our first steps have been focused on areas of most immediate need as reported by our research findings: Building financial capability, improving mental health and wellbeing and connection to a peer for support. The design and delivery model for the program is holistic, trauma-sensitive and person-centred consolidating input from DV professionals, mental health practitioners and business experts all coming together to build and facilitate a program that is completely customised in terms of content, language, and trauma-informed activities for women survivors of domestic violence.
In this presentation, we will outline our cross-functional design journey, initial roll-out and the impact this has had on our participants. We will discuss the strengths and challenges of building a program of this complexity, lessons learned and how these will inform the next stages.
Research has shown that the road to recovery from domestic violence requires time. An empathetic community, trusted input from someone who has lived experience, smarts around financial and legal affairs and IT safety are amongst the key enablers for surviving and thriving. Access to centralised, integrated services offering multidisciplinary information and support has been identified as essential by those with lived experience but according to research, this is also one of the biggest gaps today, and a potential area for improvement.
The Women’s Resilience Centre, underpinned by its trauma-informed, person-centred, strengths-based approach embarked, in 2021, on a journey to help fill gaps by designing and building an holistic multi-dimensional program that integrates four pillars of recovery: Capability building focused on financial, legal, safety, IT and life skills; Mental Health and Wellbeing; Peer-to-peer support through a mentoring program and community activities; and Strength and resilience through a clinical resilience component which will draws upon Schema Therapy, DBT and work of Bessel Van der Kolk, Gabor Mate and others on co-dependency.
Our first steps have been focused on areas of most immediate need as reported by our research findings: Building financial capability, improving mental health and wellbeing and connection to a peer for support. The design and delivery model for the program is holistic, trauma-sensitive and person-centred consolidating input from DV professionals, mental health practitioners and business experts all coming together to build and facilitate a program that is completely customised in terms of content, language, and trauma-informed activities for women survivors of domestic violence.
In this presentation, we will outline our cross-functional design journey, initial roll-out and the impact this has had on our participants. We will discuss the strengths and challenges of building a program of this complexity, lessons learned and how these will inform the next stages.
Biography
Dr Maree Gosper is Chair of the Women’s Resilience Centre Advisory Board. She is an academic with over thirty years of experience in the University sector as a researcher, teacher and organisational developer with interests in cognition and learning, e-learning, leadership and management. Maree has worked in several universities culminating in senior positions at Macquarie University as an Associate Professor, Director of Technologies in Learning and Teaching and Head of Academic Development. Her experience in policy, planning and quality enhancement has led to a governance pathway serving on Academic Boards for Banksia Institute Australia, ACPE, Study Group, ICMS and APIC.
