Peer mentoring and social coaching

Peer mentoring

What is it?
A peer mentor is a similar aged person (peer) who can provide support, guidance and role modelling to an individual.  Moving away from the standard carer model in disability, peer mentors provide the social and cultural relevance needed to provide valid social and communication support. Social modelling is learnt by observation and relies on the peer to demonstrate the targeted behaviour and the participant to imitate the behaviour. Peer-mediated interventions are well documented as an evidence-based practice for young people with ASD.

Our peer mentors
Experienced peer mentors (male & female) are assigned participants based on shared interests.  Our peer mentors understand that every young person with ASD is different and has unique needs.  At Code Blue our peer mentor team strives to provide each participant with individualised support to enable optimal social growth.

Social coaching

Social coaching is the teaching of how to behave socially, social behaviours such as conversation skills, managing emotions, empathy, forming friendships and maintaining them, sportsmanship, managing rejection etc. Research tells us that social behaviour can be learned through observing, copying, practising, repetition and role-play.

The beauty of training the social brain is that it can be approached from so many different angles, and the more that are tried, the stronger the neural connections will become. Individuals with different social brains can improve their behaviour by seeing something done properly, hearing it, walking through it, and acting it out in various situations.
(John Ratey, The User’s Guide to the Brain)