- Title: Consenting Adults
- Date: 15th May 1995
- Summary: All it takes is, "...two consenting adults recognising that one can provide some help and the other recognising that they can do with some help..." This was what Steve Rick, now Head of Personnel at the Royal Bank of Scotland said about mentoring. He started his career as an unqualified plumber 16 years ago; "I would not be in the job I am today if it had not been for a series of mentors". Marking Adult Learner's Week, Consenting Adults is a half hour documentary and five short programmes which explore mentoring, a far-sighted and fast growing method of developing people's careers as well as giving those out of work or in difficult circumstances a helping hand. Mentoring has been around in an unofficial form for thousands of years. Look behind the successful people in almost any walk of life and you will probably find one or more people who exerted a particularly strong influence over their lives and careers. At the Royal Ballet there is a tradition of more experienced dancers guiding and teaching their less experienced counterparts. According to prima ballerina Lesley Collier "most ballerinas long to pass it on. You can't dance it for them but you can let them know the pitfalls." David Clutterbuck of the European Mentoring Centre is pivotal in promoting the benefits of this powerful management tool to business and believes that it is essential, helping people through the "maze" that is the ever-changing and increasingly unstructured modern workplace. What is certain is that mentoring is a truly flexible way of delivering one-to-one advice and support. Three-day eventer Anna Hermann lost her confidence and will to win when her best horse collapsed and died under her during a competition. Former world champion Lucinda Green gave her a job and professional and personal guidance, helping her re-capture her competitive edge. The positive effects of these kinds of formal and informal support mechanisms are not restricted to the workplace. Mentoring is also being taken up in the community. BEAT is a pioneering scheme run by West Midlands Probation service and provides young offenders with a mentor who will help guide and encourage them to get away from crime and into employment and training. Simon Jordan was the first person on the scheme and, with the support of project co-ordinator Coral Gardiner, has re-trained and landed a job with a company designing scenery and conference sets in Birmingham."...it's completely turned my life around really. I'd have predicted myself that I would have come out of prison and probably ended up going back into prison again, but Coral pointed me in the right direction, she helped me out and showed me the way to go". Wherever it takes place, this is a two-way relationship and frequently it is the more experienced person who benefits most. Rene Carayol, IT Director at IPC magazines, knows what it is like to give and receive "Now that I'm a mentor I can fully understand and feel why people are so generous with their time to me because surprisingly enough I have an ego as well, and there's nothing better than having a protégé, someone who I feel I'm able to help succeed". In addition to the half-hour documentary, over the course of Adult Learner's Week Channel 4 will show five three-minute short films each featuring individual stories from three mentees and four mentors, all from different walks of life, describing and illustrating the incredible ways that mentoring has affected their lives.
- Description:To research proposal on mentors for the unemployed.
- Broadcaster:Channel 4
- Collection: Channel 4
- Genre:Entertainment
- Producer:Mentorn Media Ltd.
- Programme Episode:Episode 1
- Transmission Date:15/05/1995
- Rights:On Request
- Decade: 1990s