Frequently asked questions

Your school or referring adult invite students who they think will get the most out of the opportunity to have a mentor.

The program takes place at school or online and is one hour per week during class in term time.

Our advice is to talk to the staff at school, your head teacher or wellbeing advisors and ask them your questions about this or any other concerns you have.

Raise Mentors are volunteers from the community who have some time free each week to dedicate to mentoring a young person. As a volunteer they aren't paid to do this role. They have chosen to get working with children and police checks as well as being fully trained in youth mentoring so they can be part of the program with you. Adults of all ages sign up to become mentors, but they must be over 21.

Every session is run by a Program Counsellor (PC) who is a professional person, skilled at matching young people with mentors. During one of the early sessions the PC will run a specific game to help with this process as well as asking you afterwards if there were any people you specifically thought you had a connection with – you get to choose. PCs will also use information from your survey and the mentor surveys to help the process and pair you up with the most suitable mentor.

Safety and having a great experience is most important to us and if, for any reason, you are not enjoying or feeling comfortable in the program, you can talk to your Program Counsellor at any time, and they will help you with this.

We understand that life happens and there might be reasons why you can’t make it some weeks. If you are absent from school, your school will advise us so you don’t have to worry about that – usually they can tell us in time so that we can advise the mentor that you are away.

It’s really up to you. We provide a handbook with activities that you and your mentor can work through together, or you can simply choose to come along and talk about what’s important to you. There is no right or wrong way to do this, it’s led by you and the guide book is there to help if you can't think of anything you want to chat about that week.

We finish up with a Graduation session and you will receive a certificate for completing the program. There is an opportunity for you and your mentor to thank one another and share your feedback about the program. We love to get your feedback as we are keen to develop and improve the program to make it as useful as possible to other young people like you.

Our mentors are volunteers from across the community, our corporate partners and university placement students, who have completed Raise’ industry leading volunteer mentor training courses and hold all safety checks.

All Raise mentors must complete our youth mentoring volunteer training course. This includes 8 online learning modules and the attendance at group mentor training. Raise Digital Mentors complete additional training on how to be an online mentor, youth safety in the online space and how to use our online mentoring platform. If they pass the requirements for the training, they are then deemed a qualified mentor.

The role of the mentor is to:

• Simply listen, without judgement
• Explore strengths and identify what’s awesome about the young person
• Talk through problems when life gets complicated
• Find new ways to cope when life gets tricky
• Care about the young person and what matters to them
• Help the young person to figure out where they’re headed
• Equip the young person with skills to tackle problems head on

We focus on four main areas with mentees: help seeking, hope for the future, school belonging, and resilience. However, we leave the structure of the one-on-one sessions open to the mentor and mentee’s discretion.

They can choose to address the weekly topic covered in the online workbook, or set their own agenda based on issues important to them. Weekly topics can include friendships, positive self-talk and stress management.

Raise Digital Mentoring doesn’t have to be an either-or support. We collaborate with other support services, offering a holistic approach to youth support. Mentoring can perfectly complement the maintenance phase with a psychologist, or supplement a youth support program when weekly sessions aren’t needed but additional support would be beneficial.

Raise mentoring is free for young people though spaces are limited. We expect that once you sign up, your young person is ready to commit to finishing their set program.

There are two program types 17 weeks and 10 weeks. Depending on the program (as the name suggests) you either have 17 sessions, one-to-one, at a set time each week or 10 sessions. If you can’t make a session, you can let us know (with a minimum 24-hour notice) and we can make up a session at a later date. Please note, all 17 week programs sessions, must be completed within 20 weeks and all 10 week program sessions must be completed within 12 weeks from your start date (excluding school holidays).

Each session will run for about 45-50 minutes at most.

Everyone is different and the young person would be the focus and the lead in the conversation. But generally, you will log onto the Tacklit mentoring platform, and have a catch-up with your mentor then jump into that week’s topic.

Sessions are tailored around what the young person wants to discuss and the framework is our evidence-based youth mentoring program.

This is up to you, however, we found in our pilot program, that most families preferred to keep the mentoring sessions within school term dates.

No, all resources used in the program are accessed through our online library of resources on our mentoring platform. If you would like a copy of the workbook one can, be purchased and posted to you. Please let us know at your orientation session if this is something you would like to do.

We record all sessions as part of youth safety framework to allow our case managers to follow up on any issues that may be raised in mentoring.

No, at Raise, our programs are for a fixed amount of time. No contact details are to be shared, this includes social media and there is no contact after the program finishes.

Every match is different. If you find that you are not enjoying your time in the program, don’t quit. Please reach out to either your parent/guardian/case worker, our program manager or email communitymentoring@raise.org.au  and we will contact you to discuss the situation. Sometimes it is as easy as resetting the match expectations and goals and sometimes a rematch may need to occur. But let's chat, that's always the best place to start.

We ask that there is always a parent/carer present in the same house/location as the mentee so that should there be a disclosure which requires the support of a trusted adult, we can call them on the phone and they join the mentee in their mentoring session and together we can work out a support plan. We ask that you are not in the same room as the mentee so that they feel they can speak openly with their mentor. We know you might want to know what is going on and if there is an urgent need to bring you into the conversation we will and that’s why we ask that you are home but not in the same space as the mentee.

If you are going to be away on holidays or have exams coming up, or maybe a school camp, you can reschedule your session, as long as we have at least 24 hours' notice. If you cancel within the 24 hours, you will forfeit the session.

You can find our policy here. 

You can find our Personal Information Consent Document here which highlights what information we collect, why we collect it and how we use it.