Apprenticeship Journey

… to the June issue of the Apprenticeship Journey, our bi-monthly newsletter for enrolled apprentices.

In this issue, we talk about leadership as part of your Be Awesome module, and share the workforce diversity campaign that encourages more people into care and support roles. We also introduce you to a new initiative that aims to broaden the horizon of young people about different careers and how you may be able to participate.

In the Nailing that Assessment section, we talk about what is ‘service delivery model’ as it can be called many things, and that may be causing confusion for some of you.

Don’t forget to take the short quiz to get a chance to win 1 of 3 $50 grocery vouchers. Tip: The answers are all found in this newsletter!

Enjoy!

Leadership can mean so many things for different people. Being a leader is beyond job titles. You can be a leader in your own right.

Leadership is about supporting, inspiring, guiding, motivating, and encouraging people. When you think about how you demonstrate leadership in your role as part of your Be Awesome module, think about all the ways you have motivated, encouraged and inspired your colleagues, your team and the people you support in achieving their goals.

Here’s a short Tedx Talk video on servant leadership that may be of interest and may help change some of our assumptions about leadership.

https://youtu.be/1vIPrR_clEg

We’d like to share with you this new programme created by the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) to broaden young people’s horizons, help challenge stereotypes and address unconscious biases that can limit their potential. In 2019, a research was commissioned amongst primary and intermediate school students that showed that more than half of the students aspire to 1 of only 9 most popular jobs. The top nine jobs included sportsperson (18%) – followed by vet, police officer, lecturer/ teacher, social media influencer, artist, doctor, army/navy/airforce/firefighter, and farmer.

If you’re passionate about the work that you do in the health, social and community sectors, want to connect with your community, and want to help young people see more pathways that are available to them, tell your friends and colleagues about Inspiring the Future.

They are looking for volunteer Role Models who are willing to share their time and voice to talk about why they are passionate about their mahi. You could be sharing the good work that you do to our future workforce. Being a Role Model is another way of showing leadership qualities that also ties back into your Be Awesome module.

Visit their website to find out more: Role models | Inspiring the Future New Zealand

The vast majority of New Zealanders believe people working in community support roles are important to society but less than half of New Zealanders would recommend it to family as a career, according to new research.

Yet, it’s a hugely rewarding, varied and often life-changing career choice as revealed in a new public awareness campaign Life Changing Careers led by Careerforce and supported by the Tertiary Education Commission’s COVID-19 response fund.

We encourage you to visit the Life Changing Careers website: https://lifechangingcareers.org.nz/

We share stories there of your peers in the wider care and support workforce showing how passionate they are about their careers. We hope you find your own stories reflected in them and we would appreciate if you share them to your networks to encourage more people to join the essential care and support workforce.

Within Task 2 of the It’s About People module, you are required to identify your workplace’s service delivery model, the principles it is based on and how you apply this model in your workplace.

What do we mean by a ‘service delivery model’?
A service delivery model refers to a philosophy, a framework, or an approach that serves as the guide for how the entire organisation delivers their service. It helps all staff understand what they are doing and how they are supposed to do it. It acts as an umbrella or over-arching set of principles for the organisation in delivering their service to the people they support. A service delivery model helps us understand how we work and creates a consistency across the entire organisation.

Examples of service delivery models used in health and wellbeing settings include:

Strengths-based
Te Wheke
Restorative care
Te Whare Tapa Whā

What if your organisation has developed their own or tweaked a model to suit how you work?

That is absolutely fine! All you need to do is provide supporting evidence of this and explain via the assessment questions how this model works and how you apply this within your organisation.

Did you know that at the top of almost every page in Aka Toi, there is a Help menu to support assessors and trainees? Assessors can access both the Assessor and Trainee options.

Within each menu is a section for frequently asked questions (FAQs). These can be searched by a key word, using the alphabet menu, or browse by category.

Below the FAQs is where the quick reference guides can be found. Generally, the guides are downloadable and printable PDF documents, but there are also a few videos. Most of the guides provide pictures and detail on the ‘how’, but there are some Cheat Sheets too – these are one page quick steps for those who just need a prompt.

If there is anything you would like included in ‘Help’ or you would like some training on using Aka Toi, please call 0800 277 486 and ask for the Aka Toi team.

In mid-2020, the government released the Targeted Training and Apprenticeship Fund (TTAF) providing free fees for specific qualifications and training programmes from 1 July 2020 to 31 December 2022. The fund also applies to trainees and apprentices who were already enrolled in an eligible TTAF programme and continuing after 1 July 2020

If you enrolled in an eligible TTAF programme from 1 July 2020 onwards, no action is required from you and your fees have been automatically covered by the TTAF.

If you were already enrolled in an eligible TTAF programme and continuing training after 1 July 2020, and paid your own enrolment fees (rather than your employer), you may be entitled to a partial refund of fees. We have identified eligible trainees and apprentices in this category—if this is you, you do not need to do anything or contact us. You can expect to receive an email from our accounts team by 30 June 2021 to notify you of the details and requesting your bank account information. Please note that if you have an outstanding account with Careerforce, any refund amounts will be offset against this.

The email subject will be Refund from Careerforce – Targeted Training and Apprenticeship Fund (TTAF).

For further information about the TTAF, including a list of eligible programmes for 2020 and 2021, please see the frequently asked questions.

Apprenticeship the easiest way to upskill for Christchurch mum working in social services

Mother of three children under 5, Emma McIvor, is so proud to have completed her Apprenticeship in Social Services. The Therapeutic Care Worker for Stand Children’s Services Tu Maia Whānau in Christchurch thought she needed to wait until all her children were at least in school to be able to study. When the opportunity to do an apprenticeship was offered to her, she jumped at it.

She shares, “I made myself a plan. So, during the week I would set myself goals and chip away at them as much as I could even if it was just 1 sentence a night after I had finished my kids’ night time routine and they were in bed. I tried really hard to not let the apprenticeship take too much time away from my kids on the weekends as I work during the week. This program is perfect for me in the stage of life that I am at.”

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