Aimee Rubio is passionate about supporting people to achieve their goals and to be as independent as possible.
Starting as a Flexible Supports Coordinator with the Florence Nightingale Agency five years ago, Aimee’s focus was giving choice and control to people to support them to stay in their home or community. She gained an immense sense of satisfaction in the knowledge that she was making a meaningful difference in people’s lives.
“I was looking for more challenges within our organisation, and was given the opportunity to look into more training,” says Aimee.
The Level 5 Leadership and Management Diploma stood out to her, and so with support from work-based training provider, Careerforce, she embarked on the 18-month programme. Aimee completed the Diploma and has secured a leadership role with the agency.
Level 5 Diploma graduate Aimee Rubio
The Florence Nightingale Agency provides in-home care to people to support their independent living. The agency based in Christchurch also has teams in Nelson, Marlborough, Otago and Southland.
Now as Client Services Manager in Christchurch, Aimee leads a team of coordinators providing Living my Life programmes to ACC clients to best support them with their aspirations and goals.
“With the Living my Life Programme, we support clients with social interactions, meaningful work, community engagement and living skills. We help to make a real and tangible difference in a person’s life,” says Aimee.
“I enjoy looking at ways we can be more efficient and being able to promote our services. Also, being able to support more people with achieving their goals and being as independent as possible.”
The Leadership and Management Diploma is a 20-month entirely work-based learning programme completed via an online learning and assessment platform. Careerforce takes enrolments throughout the year, and each learner is assigned a dedicated leadership and management coach for the duration of the programme.
The programme assesses the skills, knowledge, and competencies in areas such as motivating and developing others, business practices, impacts of external factors, innovation, problem solving and analysing how Te Tiriti ō Waitangi can be applied to business.
Although she had completed other qualifications before, Aimee confessed she still found it challenging at first while she got to grips with understanding how to complete the assessments.
“I was initially nervous about starting the study, but I soon became confident to complete it, with the flexibility and support from my coach/assessor,” says Aimee.
Aimee was assigned to Careerforce assessor, Colleen Eason, who she describes as amazing.
“She was super helpful and supported me through this. She met with me before starting each new module to go over the information and allowed me space to brainstorm situations and examples that I could base my answers on.
“It was also great to be able to do the learning in my workplace. Being able to do it all online was great too as it gave me the flexibility I needed.”
Aimee says that the pace of learning worked well for her because she could work at her own speed and around work commitments and family life.
Having completed the Diploma, she looks at things in a different way now and can strategically look at her tasks to better support her team and the work they do.
“It has really helped me progress within my role and advance my knowledge and skills,” says Aimee.
“I consider internal and external influences much more. It has helped me look at things with a different lens and assess the best way to meet our client needs. I am looking at how we can increase our services, and at the best way to sell ideas to our management team.”
Aimee is now looking at other avenues for study and what to do next.
Careerforce is a work-based training provider for the health and wellbeing sectors. For more information about the New Zealand Diploma in Business (Level 5) Leadership and Management, contact Careerforce.