Successful Workplace Training in Action
Te Whatumanawa Maoritanga o Rehua
Te Whatumanawa Maoritanga o
Rehua (Rehua Marae) is a Marae Home-Based provider in Christchurch that
works to provide positive alternative services for whanau, hapu and iwi
through kaupapa Maori practice.
These services include health education to Whanau Ora (Taua, Poua, Kuia and Koroua) aged between 55-65yrs old with a focus on prevention and management of asthma, diabetes, cardiac-vascular and chronic obstructive respiratory disease. They provide services for wahine 40+ with focus on participation in breast and cervical screening programme, and have Daycare for 65+ twice a week.
They also provide Home Support Service for 55+, including Personal Care (showering/bathing, oral care, mirimiri, supervision, groomingand dressing) and Domestic Care (laundry, vacuuming, kitchen and bathroom hygiene making beds and food preparations).
ehua Marae currently has three trainees participating in Core Competencies (Level 3), all of whom successfully completed Foundation Skills (Level 2). Once Core Competencies is completed, the next step for staff on their career pathway will be the National Certificate in Diversional Therapy (Level 4).
For each trainee a strategic plan is developed which shows the time frame for trainees to complete the learning and assessment. To support the learning a two hour workshop is booked out each Thursday for group study.
Trainees also study in their own time, and at work when time is available.
According to the staff at Rehua Marae,
achieving these qualifications is not only benefiting Kaumatua and Kuia,
but also staff and Rehua Marae itself.
“Kaumatua and Kuia benefit as the training helps give us the skills to guide them in maximising their independence and increasing their wellbeing”.
“Achieving the Diversional Therapy qualification will allow us to provide a better service to nga kaumatua, and gain access to a wider stream of services and supports that enhance their quality of life”.
“There are severe shortages of qualified Maori Diversional Therapists in Christchurch and through training our own Diversional Therapists we hope to inspire and motivate other Maori providers to achieve these certificates as well”.
Laura Fergusson Trust Canterbury
Laura Fergusson Trust Canterbury prides itself on being a learning organisation. Each of the 62 staff members have learning plans that set out their annual training and education programmes. These plans are developed with the support of educator and assessor Jill Waldron, who has been working with the Trust for three years.
All staff are entitled to two hours paid training time weekly, which can either be at work or at home. Those wishing to undertake higher level study, such training to become an enrolled or registered nurse, are able to apply for scholarships that fund course fees.
Support workers at Laura Fergusson are expected to start Foundation Skills (Level 2) within six weeks of beginning employment. For many staff qualifications in Core Competencies (Level 3) and Human Services (Level 3) are included as the next steps in their learning plans.
Laura Fergusson has a diverse workforce, with over 20 nationalities represented. This has provided an opportunity for Trust and Careerforce to support and formally recognise previous learning and overseas training that staff bring to their work.
Support worker, Beverley Frost has benefited from having her prior training recognised. Beverley came to New Zealand from England having completed a City and Guilds qualification in social care. Following a comparison of this qualification against the Foundation Skills qualification, Beverley was awarded over half the unit standards towards her National Certificate in Community Support Services (Foundation Skills) (Level 2). Beverley can now focus on the content of the qualification that is new to her.
Laura Fergusson also has an in-house training programme. This includes regular guest speakers addressing specific topics such as stress management, human rights, informed consent, emergency preparedness and pain management.
CEO Sonia Pratt believes the learning opportunities offered to staff are producing widespread benefits.
“Trainees are benefiting from increased self esteem and confidence, and because they are more skilled, they are able to give residents better support,” says Sonia.
VisionWest Baptist Home Healthcare
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VisionWest Baptist Home Healthcare (formerly Baptist Home Care Waitakere) provides home care support for over 1300 people across the community and employs over 300 staff. Over the last few years 180 VisionWest staff have obtained either Foundation Skills (Level 2) or Core Competencies (Level 3). Many have gone on to further their careers in the healthcare industry.
Such is VisionWest’s commitment to training that earlier this year they appointed Stuart Abson to the role of Training Facilitator. Stuart has previously worked as a vocational trainer and training manager in the Royal Australian Navy for many years.
Stuart said the first thing he did when he started at VisionWest was to develop a strategic overview of the organisation’s current and future training needs.
“As an organisation we want to increase the training levels of our staff. This helps ensure staff can competently support our increasing number of higher needs clients, now and into the future. We are also aware that in the future support workers might need the Level 2 qualification if they want to stay in the industry,” says Stuart.
Once the strategic overview was developed Stuart populated a database showing each staff member’s qualifications and experience, and what each staff member’s training needs were. This led to an initial focus on the Foundation Skills (Level 2) qualification and close involvement in Careerforce’s Integrated Workplace Learning Project.
VisionWest has taken a structured approach to Foundation Skills training. Groups of up to 16 trainees take part in classroom style learning sessions. Stuart personally interviews each participant prior to the training and provides them with clear expectations of what their responsibilities are and what they can expect. It takes about four months for Stuart to take each group through the nine unit standards that make up Foundation Skills. He tells his trainees, “Do it my way and you are achieve your Level 2 qualification in 4 months. Work hard for a short sharp time and you’ll get the result.”
Prior to commencing the training, the literacy and numeracy skills of trainees are gauged through the use of the TECs new national literacy assessment tool.“As soon as I took on the job, I could see that there was a literacy problem amongst some of our staff,” says Stuart. “The literacy tool helps determine whether the trainee can cope with the learning on their own, if they need to come to class, or if it’s going to be a major problem that needs additional support. It can also help identify each trainee’s learning style”.
To contextualise the training to VisionWest and its policies and procedures, Stuart has developed question sheets for each unit standard. Stuart says this has helped trainees better understand what is expected of them as part of the assessments and how the assessments directly relate to VisionWest’s policies and procedures.
Stuart says he and his fellow staff have worked hard to develop a learning culture at Vision West over the past year. “It’s important that we raise the profile of training amongst our support workers. We need to keep both training and VisionWest’s expectations right at the forefront of people’s minds,” says Stuart.
.In less than nine months at VisionWest, Stuart has developed systems and structures that are supporting trainees successfully, particularly in completing their Foundation Skills. Stuart says he is now turning his attention improving the training outcomes for support workers undertaking Core Competencies and other vocational training in high demand.
Spotlight on Creative Abilities
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Creative Abilities and Associates Ltd provides support to individuals living with physical and/or intellectual impairment.
To ensure all clients have the opportunity to experience the 'Good Life', staff at Creative Abilities work with Careerforce to upskill their knowledge and abilities.
Creative Abilities has developed a learning culture where team members have the opportunity to upskill, develop career paths, and take on further responsibilities.
Julie Renner is a great example of this learning culture in action. Since starting with Creative Abilities eight and a half years ago as a support worker, Julie’s pathway has taken her from support worker to Assistant Manager of the centre, to Community/House Coordinator, to Training Manager.
Over this time she has completed the National Certificate in Human Services (Level 4) and has become a Careerforce Workplace Assessor. She is currently undertaking the National Certificate in Adult Education and Training, and has already set her sights on doing the National Certificate in Disability Provision Information.
Julie says one of her motivations for doing the National Certificate in Disability Provision Information is that once she completes it she will be able to assess against it. This will mean Creative Abilities will be able to offer the qualification to their staff.
Julie's enthusiasm for learning has reflected on other team members who enjoy the opportunity to increase their ability to ensure that dignity, respect, fun and the 'Good Life' is assured for all.
Presbyterian Support Otago
Presbyterian Support Services Otago (PSO) place great value on ongoing education for their care and support workforce. All care and support workers have the opportunity to undertake Careerforce’s Foundation Skills (Level 2) and Core Competencies (Level 3) national qualifications. The portability and transferability of these qualifications is ideal for PSO as their workforce is spread over aged care residential and home based services.
Training Coordinator Mary Phillips believes the training is enhancing the quality of service PSO is able to deliver to clients. “The training is helping care and support workers understand their role, what it involves, and their boundaries. Not only is it teaching staff our policies and procedures, but it is also helping them understand why the policies and procedures exist,” says Mary Phillips.
Care and support staff working in residential aged care are able to continue their career pathway by undertaking the Residential Strand qualification (Level 3). This is a new national qualification, with the first enrollment occurring in February. Six trainees nationwide have so far completed the qualification and of these, five are employed at PSOs Ranui Home in Alexandra.
Registered Nurse Sue Webb, the trainer and onsite assessor at Ranui, believes the secret to Ranui’s success has been holding regular, fortnightly group learning sessions.“The training is offsite, informal and a lot of fun,” says Sue. “The girls love working together and are really enthusiastic about the training”.
“Studying is a skill you need to relearn and most of our carers haven’t studied in years. The Careerforce training provides a great opportunity to get back into the habit of learning”.
“It’s great seeing people grasping for the first time why we do things the way we do. Another benefit of the training is that trainees have increased understanding of conditions, and have the skills they need to recognise when conditions change and to know what to do,” says Sue.
PSO Ranui held a graduation ceremony in recognition of the effort and time their care and support workers put into the training. The ceremony was attended by family, friends and residents. Sue says many residents were amazed and humbled that their carers had gone to the effort of getting a national qualification so they could provide them with higher quality care and support.
Photo: PSO Ranui Residential Strand graduates (from left to right):Kathleen Johnsen, Deidre Musson, Lois Hall, Jennifer Handford, Deborah McStay with Assessor Sue Webb
Bupa Care Services
With 45 rest homes and hospitals and more than 3,200 employees, Bupa Care Services, formerly Guardian Health Care, are one of the largest providers of aged residential care health services in New Zealand.
Over the last 12 months Bupa has worked closely with Careerforce, promoting and encouraging caregiving staff to being the Level 3 Core Competencies and Residential Qualifications, as well as the Level 4 Dementia Limited Credit Programme. To be eligible, staff have to be employed for more than 6 months.
Mapping out the verification and assessment tasks in each unit standard against the work that staff regularly do on a daily basis was important in getting support and buy-in from individual rest homes and hospitals. This process helped demonstrate that staff were already doing a lot of the work required, and that by making a few modifications staff could obtain National Qualifications and embark on a learning pathway.
The training is fully funded for staff and is linked to the 'progress steps' - a pay scale where staff participation in training is rewarded. Bupa's Learning and Development Fund was established to ensure access for all to ongoing training and development. Employees can also apply for study grants to undertake nursing degrees, nurse assistant training, or other relevant development study.
Photo: Bupa Parklands educator Jan McRae was acknowledged at a graduation ceremony in November 2009 for the key role she has played ensuring training has been of the highest quality, and that assessment and verification processes have successfully supported the learning.
Canterbury Home Care Charitable Trust (Berrywood)
.png "Support workers Renee and Keith with one of the residents at Berrywood.")
Canterbury Home Care Charitable Trust (Berrywood) offers accommodation, care and services to young people with physical disabilities, and who wish to participate in the daily running of the home and community activities.
Berrywood support workers Renee and Keith are doing their National Certificate in Community Support (Foundation Skills) ( Level 2) and their organisation has received a Disability Workforce Development training grant to support them.
This is the first time Renee and Keith have worked in disability support services, and they have now clocked up eight years between them at Berrywood in Christchurch.
Both have worked in a variety of industries before, and Renee says that working in disability support services "...has opened my eyes – these guys are just like everyone else".
"This is the guys’ place – not a sterile home – it’s just like a flat, and I just love working here," says Renee.
"Doing the national certificate is upping my knowledge and also refreshing my memory", says Renee, who is glad she is able to complete the workbooks at work, as time outside work is filled with other activities.
“I also need the resources here at work, and it’s good to get help from others and hear other people’s opinions." One of the clients often offers to help when they are taking some time to study, and between them they think about the answers.
Keith says the training has helped him to provide better support to clients.
"It all brushes off on how we work with the guys, and at the end we’ll have something to prove it. I may even carry on to the next level," says Keith.
Story courtesy of Te Pou
Embedding in action at Braemore Lodge
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Braemore Lodge is a mental health residential facility working within the Lakes District in the Bay of Plenty.
All new staff are enrolled in Careerforce’s Foundation Skills (Level 2) national qualification. Upon completing this they are encouraged to go onto Core Competencies (Level 3) and the National Certificate in Mental Health Support Work (Level 4). Career pathways are well established and start from the point of orientation and induction, which fits around the Foundation Skills qualification.
According to Braemore Manager Donna Mitchell, the results of training have been obvious.
"Staff are developing higher levels of confidence and are providing better quality of care. Not onlu are staff now fully aware of policies and procedures, but they understand why they exist in the first place,” says Donna.
Donna is one of two registered assessors at Braemore. “We assess more than one unit standard at a time, and often more than one staff member at a time. We capture naturally occurring evidence at work, when it happens. Because we work closely with the staff we know what they can do, and if they’ve already demonstrated the skills required then there’s no need to make them role play it or act it out,” says Donna.
Britannia's Training Success
Daph Turner is Manager of Britannia House, a small rest home based in Petone, Wellington. Daph is an enthusiastic supporter of workplace training, with nearly all of her staff (including the cleaner) achieving Careerforce’s national qualifications.
Daphne says that when she completed her Bachelor of Nursing her daughter went and bought the biggest frame she could find for Daph’s certificate to hang in her office. At residents’ meeting shortly after, a resident requested that the certificate be put on display in the hallway for all to see. Daph agreed, on the condition that every subsequent trainee had their certificates on display. So the “rogues’ gallery” was instituted. The wall is a tribute to Daph’s celebration of success and her encouragement of staff.
With steady but consistent training, staff have become highly self motivated and achieved more than they ever thought possible, and they are further recognised by the residents, who take great interest and pride in the achievements of their care givers.
Over the last 17 years that Daph has been promoting training at the rest home she has been encouraged by the achievement and success among her staff, the energy that has developed among staff to work towards qualifications and the way the residents have responded to the trainees.
“It’s wonderful to see the confidence build in new trainees - the lightbulb goes on, and you can see that a trainee will suddenly get it – they will understand the different dementia types, because they will be able to see the condition in a particular resident”, said Daph.
One of the biggest challenges for trainees is learning new language and medical terms for procedures. Daph makes sure that care plans include medical abbreviations as well as the full terminology. This helps to increase familiarity with medical terms, the health and standards are in place, but there is little room for misinterpretation by newer staff.
With the pressures on rest homes to care for an increasing number and severity of health needs, Daphne says training can help ease the risk in relying on key supervisory staff, because it gives all staff the knowledge and confidence to apply sound judgement and follow procedures correctly.
“We don’t want our residents having to wait to receive care – we need all our staff to have the training and the confidence to follow the right procedures for immediate care. I have assurance that staff know what to do when a resident has a fall, or how to shower someone so the water isn’t too cold or too hot, or monitor urine for infection and take the appropriate action. Residents get much better quality of care - it’s a win-win situation all round.”
According to Daph, workplace training has had significant benefits for everyone because everything that trainees learn on the job is practised and reinforced daily. She can check that procedures are being properly conducted and the results are frequently observed and commented on by residents and their families.
Up-skilling the Bupa way
Bupa Care Services are working to align their caregiver training resources with Careerforce’s level 2 and 3 qualifications. The objective of the project is to strengthen and support Bupa’s existing induction and staff development processes, maximise efficiencies and reduce duplication.
Bupa’s Deb Witheford is the project coordinator for this programme. She says the project has revealed that there are many learning opportunities at Bupa and a robust internal evaluation programme, but that not enough evidence of employee competency is collected to satisfy unit standard requirements.
Deb has developed an orientation book that includes an assessment component. This new resource means that employees are now able to achieve Foundation Skills (Level 2) while they complete Bupa’s orientation programme. The orientation resource includes references to the learning and to the policies and procedures trainees need to be familiar with.
A key focus for Deb has been developing assessments which are contextualised to Bupa and which utilise existing staff development processes. The assessment materials are written using language and documentation that staff working in Bupa care homes are familiar with.
As part of the orientation programme staff are allocated a buddy for six weeks. During this time they are supported to complete the knowledge tasks of Foundation Skills. To help staff achieve Personal Care unit standard (23386), trainees are observed supporting a resident with a hygiene procedure. All going well, trainees receive their final assessment as part of their three month appraisal, when their manager or supervisor provides an attestation of their skills, knowledge and attitudes.
Deb says that as a result of the qualification being available, staff are more motivated to complete their orientation within the required timeframe. “Being able to complete Foundation Skills as part of their orientation gives them a real boost in confidence,” says Deb.
The Foundation Skills aligned orientation programme is currently being piloted at seven care homes. Twenty-three staff have so far enrolled, and of these five have already completed. The programme will be formally evaluated in November, but preliminary feedback suggests that the training has strengthened the confidence of the staff and their ability to advocate on behalf of residents.
Deb is currently comparing the requirements of Core Competencies (Level 3) with Bupa’s annual education programme. This work will be completed this year, allowing the first Bupa staff member to undertake Core Competencies using Bupa resources in 2012. In this way Bupa staff will be able to begin a national qualification based pathway, progressing from level 2 to 3, and doing it ‘the Bupa way’.
Bupa graduate Brenda Llewell
Brenda is an experienced caregiver who will be buddy for new staff undertaking the programme. Foundation Skills is her first ever qualification.
Brenda says "This is a very big achievement for me. I'm very proud of myself."
Bupa graduate Misty Fraser
Misty started out as a caregiver at Rossendale Hospital, Hamilton, but now works as an Activities Assistant. Foundation Skills is Misty's first qualification.
Misty says the achievement has given her confidence that she can do a good job, and she is motivated to continue with the level 3 qualification.
From left is Glory May Recierdo (Clinical Manager), Adriana Ciolpan (Facility Manager) and Misty Fraser.
If your organisation has an embedded education and training programme and you would like this to be evaluated against the requirements of a Careerforce qualification, please contact Careerforce’s Lisa Williams
