Welcome and information
Welcome to the Phoenix Mentor course. We are delighted to have you onboard.
NDSA are an autistic-led non-profit social enterprise working to support autistic adults. We run a peer mentoring programme supporting autistic people post-diagnosis and a Tool Up mentoring into employment programme. Based on our expertise we are now working on Project Phoenix – the programme for the rehabilitation of autistic people with convictions.
The fundamental tenet of the programme is that tack of effective strategies and habits to cope with neurodivergent conditions are contributing to offending. To promote rehabilitation and prevent reoffending, neurodivergent people need support in developing new coping habits that are inherent and work for their neurodivergent condition. Peer mentors are in best position to help with such strategies. The mentoring programme will support the development of new coping habits and provide social support from the autistic community.
You volunteered to be trained to become a mentor on Project Phoenix.
Your trainer
Marie, our Managing Director, MPhil, MBA, PG Cert Autism, has 5 year experience running our support programmes and 20 years experience of advocacy. She is an expert by experience and a student of the Autism Master course at Sheffield Hallam university. She is a mother of autistic children and has been through a very broad range of experiences typical of the autistic people’s life journey. She is an innovator by trade, the founder and managing director of NDSA, and Innovate UK Women In Innovation award holder, living and breathing our programmes.
Your contacts for the project are:
•Marie – toolup@ndsa.uk
•no-reply@ndsa.uk •
Please add these to your contacts and check spam folders for new messages.
Course organisation
We will be running live Zoom based presentations with question-answer sessions and discussion. The duration of the sessions will be mostly 1.5 hours, except for some sessions that will be 2 hours. There will be a self-study online segment on safeguarding commissioned from an external provider – CPD College..
There will also be optional invitation based two training sessions on working with sex offenders provided by Circles South East, who are an expert organisation in this field.
The timeline for the project is as follows:
Project Phoenix training schedule spring 2024
9th of March at 1 pm – welcome and information meeting
11th March at 1 pm, 2 hours, 12th at 3 pm 2 hours, 15th March at 3 pm, 1.5 hours – Autism
18th March at 3 pm 1.5 hours – mentoring
19th March – 3 pm 1.5 hours – case studies
22nd March at 3 pm, 2 hours – boundaries and the role of the mentor
25th March – 1 to 5 pm – Circles South East ‘Working with sex offenders’ Part 1
27th March – 1 to 5 pm – Circles South East Part 2
28th March -2 pm, 2 hours – Autistic offending with Prof Allely
3 April – 3 pm, 1 hour – Autistic brain
5th April 3 pm, 1.5 hours – case studies with Prof Ackerman
6th April Saturday 3 pm, 1,5 hours – release and post release
8th April 3 pm, 1.5 hours – organisation
9th April – safeguarding online training, 2 hours
Week of 8th April:
• DBS check submitted
• Contract
Start of mentoring week of 15th April.
The Lerning objectives
These objectives are
- To understand autism and thriving strategies
- To understand the nature and good practice of mentoring
- To learn about autistic offending
- To practice applying knowledge through case studies
- To learn about the arrangements pre- and post release from prison
- To learn about safeguarding
- For those who volunteered to learn about working with sex offenders
- To understand the organisation of tthe NDSA mentoring programme.
We are going to discuss this in more detail during the information and welcome session (the presentation is below).
How to navigate the course?
The course is structured in series of lessons that you can access on Course page
The lessons are further split into topics. You need to complete all topics if all lessons
To navigate you can use the breadcrums
or the navigation buttons at the bottom of the page:
To view lectures click on the Materials tab on the lesson page
I hope you will enjoy the course,
Marie Djela
