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Show Goal 3: IRC Staff and Family Mentors will establish a working relationship that includes regular contact. Objective 1: Establish the ways in which family mentors are accountable to IRC Staff, measured by regular points of contact, specifically: volunteer hours, feedback on refugee families, and feedback on the Family Mentor Program. Current Practice: 5. 3 .1.1 The need for family mentors to communicate regularly with IRC has been discussed throughout Goal 1 and 2. For Goal 3 - Objective 1, I would like to demonstrate the current levels of accountability to IRC that family mentors feel and why. The expectation of current family mentors is to have regular communication with IRC in the form of monthly volunteer hours, updates on refugee families, and feedback regarding any issues or ideas with the Family Mentor Program in general. Family mentors do not understand that regular communication is expected, nor do they know what information would be helpful. As a result, the majority of family mentors do not communicate regularly with IRC Staff (FGs, Is, 6 of 12 surveys). 5.3.1.2 With regards to monthly volunteer hours, the majority of family mentors have never reported them to IRC, even in the beginning of their mentoring experience. These individuals did not know that IRC is interested in collecting volunteer hours, the financial reasons IRC wants to collect the hours, nor do they remember ever being asked to report them (I 1 and 2). There are a couple of mentors who did turn in hours during the initial months of their mentoring and then they just stopped because they did not receive any feedback from IRC on the matter. There is one mentor who is still reporting his/her hours (FG 1). All of the family mentors that I worked with are willing to tum in their volunteer hours. Three-fourths of them said that they would be more likely to do so if they were consistently reminded (FG2, I 1). 5.3.1.3 With regards to feedback on refugee families, the majority of family mentors do not give feedback to IRC even though all of them agree that it could be important to do so. However, it is unclear to mentors what information IRC is interested in receiving. Beyond this, family mentors would like to have a relationship with IRC that could allow for them to receive feedback. Family mentors feel that the best way to achieve this is to develop a relationship with case managers but they have been instructed not to by IRC. Family mentors are unaware that there is a communication infrastructure in place that can filter feedback from mentor to case manager through Family Mentor Program staff via the activity log. One family mentor commented, "I have really tried to communicate the needs of my families in many ways, via email, phone call, and also just going down to !RC but, even recently starting with [IRC Director] on down, [Resource Developer], [Family Mentor Vista Worker], etc. they do not answer emails or calls and you have no idea if they even got the messages. Altogether !RC is really unresponsive. They are overwhelmed, they already can't do the ideas that they have, they don't want to 23 of23 |
