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Peer mentoring is a supportive relationship where someone who has adapted to life with physical disability offers guidance, encouragement, and practical advice to another person facing similar challenges. Mentors typically work with mentees who have similar injuries. Drawing from their own lived experiences, mentors help people navigate both practical issues, such as adjusting to life using a wheelchair, and interpersonal challenges, like maintaining friendships and intimate relationships. This connection can be a powerful source of emotional support, motivation, and hope throughout the rehabilitation process.
While peer mentoring is known to support emotional and social adjustment, less is understood about how it might help individuals achieve their employment goals. Researchers at the Center for Rehabilitation Outcomes Research (CROR) at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab set out to explore this question—specifically by examining peer mentoring programs that include employment components. Their investigation is part of a $4.5 million grant funded by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research.
Improving employment outcomes for people with physical disabilities through peer mentoring isn’t straightforward, notes CROR associate director Linda Ehrlich-Jones, PhD, RN. One reason is that many people with traumatic brain or spinal cord injuries are injured in their youth before they are even finished with high school and so have little or no experience applying for jobs or working for a company.
The researchers conducted a systematic review of published papers that focused on effective peer-mentoring programs for people with disabilities in terms of finding or maintaining employment. The goal was to identify best practices that could be used to develop a training curriculum for peer mentors at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab that would help them address their mentee's employment challenges such as disclosing a disability to a prospective employer or asking for a job accommodation. The results of the systematic review were published in the journal Disability and Rehabilitation.
Yet out of the more than 3,500 manuscripts they reviewed, only eight met the inclusion criteria for the systematic review. Five of those came from Canada, one was from Australia and two were from California. Some of the employment-mentoring programs were conducted in person, others by email or phone and some via online meetings or forums. They also varied in length from four weeks on the short end to 24 months at the longest.
Three of the studies looked at people with spinal cord injuries while others also included those with impairments related to traumatic brain injuries, multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy. One thing the eight studies had in common was that they were all conducted in community settings, not hospitals or other institutions. “The fact is there was little consistency among the programs either in terms of content or how they offered it,” said Ehrlich-Jones. “It was hard to collate the information because the programs were so different from one another.”
Even so, the good news was that the studies consistently reported that peer mentoring in general had a positive effect on the participants’ sense of well-being and fostered community integration in terms of school and work. “Among the programs where we did have information, we found that peer mentors can improve educational and employment outcomes,” said CROR research manager Deborah Crown, MS, CRC, LCPC, who worked on the systematic review. “As a rehabilitation counselor myself, one of my main takeaways was that peer mentors are a powerful and meaningful support system to include in vocational rehabilitation plans.”
Research reflects Crown’s idea that peer mentoring can be an effective vehicle for providing employment-related support. A 2012 article in the journal, NeuroRehabilitation, described a large-scale California peer-mentoring program aimed at helping young adults with recently acquired disabilities either go on to college or find employment. Of the 77 mentees in the Back on Track Success Mentoring Program who were matched with peer mentors, 42 (54.5%) had successful outcomes defined as either returning to school or becoming employed. “Overall, findings suggest that mentoring can be beneficial toward achieving the goals of post-secondary education, employment and community reintegration,” the authors concluded.
One thing that stood out for the CROR researchers was that the most effective programs included a structured curriculum and oversight of the peer mentors from vocational rehabilitation counselors or other employment professionals. Successful programs also offered those mentored multiple ways to reach their peer mentors, including in-person and online. “Having a good working relationship between the peer mentors and the vocational rehabilitation counselors was the most helpful,” said Ehrlich-Jones. “The peer mentors can relate their personal experience but it’s really the vocational rehabilitation people who know where the employment resources are.”
The CROR researchers concluded that it would be feasible to add an employment and educational component to many peer-mentoring programs for people with physical disabilities. “Peer mentoring remains a very promising augmentation and supplement to vocational rehabilitation,” said CROR director Allen Heinemann, PhD. “Given the early findings that people who receive peer mentoring are very enthusiastic about it, it suggests continued investigation is warranted.”