2 July 2010

Pact is going to be sharing its expertise, in providing CareerForce qualifications, with the wider sector.

Pact runs a successful CareerForce training programme through our education team, providing a National Certificate in Community Support Services with two offerings: Core Competencies and Intellectual Disability (both Level 3).

To increase the uptake of CareerForce qualifications in frontline support services, CareerForce is funding innovative programmes and has awarded Pact a Workplace Training Innovation Programme contract.

Pact analyst Steve Catty put together a proposal for the contract, offering the innovation of taking a collaborative and inclusive approach to broaden the Pact programme to the wider sector. Already there are seven supporting employers keen for their staff to receive training through Pact.

The training will done at the Pact office with Pact staff.

"It will be demand-driven so I imagine there will be quite a mix of staff from different organisations coming to any one session," Steve says. "So you might have one person from one NGO and a couple from another and several from Pact. There will be informal sharing and collaboration, where people talk about their experiences. I think that it’ll bring the sector closer together."

There is likely to be a component of workplace-based assessment and/or assistance as well.

Steve says it’s a "win-win-win situation" for supporting employers, CareerForce and Pact.

The supporting employers receive free support for their staff to complete CareeForce qualifications and CareerForce gets its qualifications into more workplaces and has peace of mind, knowing Pact’s programme has a proven track record.

For Pact, it means being able to expand our education team (hiring a new CareerForce coordinator) and it also means fresh ideas can be gleaned from people from other organisations who attend CareerForce training at Pact.

It is a three-year programme. The new CareerForce coordinator and senor clinician educator Katie Wilsher will effectively be the CareerForce delivery team, with Katie looking after the education side of things.

"The coordinator will coordinate, administer and hopefully assess the qualifications and they’ll also network within the community to get more supporting employers," Steve says.

At present Pact runs Core Competencies and Intellectual Disability which are two of the National Certificate Level 3 qualifications. We have also proposed adding Level 4 and 5 senior support worker and team leader training when these are ready (they are currently being developed by Careerforce) for both our own staff and the wider sector.

Pact will also offer Level 2 Foundation Skills to supporting employers. This is not offered to Pact staff because our existing core training means our staff are ready to start at Level 3.