The Village Community Mentors Project

Having a baby can be a time of great joy and excitement, but also very physically and emotionally demanding. A positive transition can contribute to the mother’s confidence and well-being. The Village Foundation is partnering with the University of South Australia to develop a program of support for mothers.

The Village Community Project hopes to support women in this transitional time by designing and piloting a program to promote positive well-being for mothers and assist women to connect with other mothers. Specifically, this study aims to engage mothers to help the design of a peer mentoring program. Your participation and feedback will contribute to developing this program.

If you are interested, please read through the information below.

What does the project involve?

We are looking for women who have had a baby in the last 5 years to participate in three conversational-style workshops either at the City of Burnside Council, the City of Salisbury or with the Gogo Foundation in the city centre. In this workshop, you will contribute to the design of the peer mentoring program by having discussions with the co-design facilitators.  The workshops will run for approximately 2 hours each time. Refreshments will be offered during this time.

What do I need to do to participate? 

If you are willing to participate in this project, please read the Participant Information Sheet which you can download and print. You will be asked to complete an Expression of Interest (below) and provide an email or phone number. All details will be kept confidential.

Once you have done this the project officer Cathy Stoodley will follow up your interest with an email and or phone call. 

If you decide to participate in the workshops, you will be asked to provide written consent at the beginning of the workshop and be required to complete a short anonymous questionnaire. The questionnaire will collect some general information about yourself such as your age, gender, postcode, and number of children.

Will the project have any risks? 

There are no known risks involved in this study, however, if you do feel distressed at any point you should make contact with your GP.  Additionally, you can contact Beyond Blue and Lifeline.

Voluntary participation - can I withdraw from the project? 

It is completely up to you whether or not you participate. Participation in this project is voluntary and you may withdraw from it at any stage.  If you wish to withdraw from the study once it has started, you can do so at any time without having to give a reason.

What if English is not my first language

The research will be conducted in English, translations of key documents and the presence of a bilingual adult support person and use of official interpreters will hopefully address the diverse language needs of participants. However, participants whose language needs cannot be accommodated by the bilingual support person or interpreters will not be able to participate in the study.  

What about privacy?

All records containing personal information will remain confidential and no information which could lead to the identification of any individual will be released except in the case of a legal requirement to pass on personal information to authorised third parties. This requirement is standard and applies to information collected both in research and non-research situations. Such requests to access information are rare; however, we have an obligation to inform you of this possibility. The data collected from the workshop and pilot survey will be stored on a secure University of South Australia data management system and be password protected. The data from the short demographic survey and workshops will be de-identified for analysis.

What about ethics?

This project has also been approved by the University of South Australia's Human Research Ethics Committee (Ethics Protocol 205355). If you have any questions about being a research participant in general or should you have any concerns or complaints about any aspect of the project or the way it is being conducted, please contact the Executive Officer of this Committee – humanethics@unisa.edu.au / tel: +61 8 8302 6330.

If you have any questions about the study or you would like to discuss the information sheet please, contact Cathy Stoodley on 0430346633 or via email on cathy.stoodley@unisa.edu.au

Get involved

If you are willing to participate in this project, please read the Participant Information Sheet (add PDF) and complete the expression of interest form below. Once this has been submitted, the project officer Cathy Stoodley will contact you on your preferred form of communication.