Skills for Good - February 2021: Diversity Campaign - we seek your help, RoVE update, Literacy Summit and more

Kia ora

Welcome to the February edition of Skills for Good.

In this edition we focus on the Workforce Diversity Campaign. An objective of the campaign is to build greater diversity in the care and support workforce. We are inviting Wellington-based care and support workers to a hui, to help inform and focus the campaign content. We would be most grateful to those who can attend this hui. Please see details below.

A reminder that our Jobs for Good platform is up and running. This platform is available to employers with job vacancies. You are welcome to list them here for free.

Ngā mihi nui

Andrew Saunders
General Manager, Employer Services

As we have previously outlined, this campaign is funded out of the TEC’s Covid Response Fund, and has the objectives of promoting the rewards and opportunities available across the care and support workforce, and building greater diversity within it. The lack of diversity within the care and support workforce has long been acknowledged, including concerns around demographic mismatches between those receiving care and support, and those providing care and support. However, during Covid, the lack of diversity in the care and support workforce also exposed this as a significant resilience risk, with a large number of workers stood down over Covid as they were deemed vulnerable.

We achieved a major milestone in the evolution of this campaign earlier in February with the appointment of Doublefish as the creative agency that will lead the development of the campaign, and our aim is to launch the campaign in April. We are super excited to be leading the development of this campaign on behalf of the aged care, disability, home & community, mental health & addiction and social service sectors.

We are seeking Wellington-based care and support workers
(ideally including a mix of younger workers, male workers, Māori/Pasifika workers)

Short notice we know, but Careerforce/ Doublefish are hosting a hui at our Wellington offices next Wednesday 3 March from 9am-1pm. We are seeking participants to be representative of those that we want to target via the campaign (including a mix of younger, more males, Māori/Pasifika), and who are ideally within their first 1-3 years in a care and support role. Via the hui, we want to build a deeper understanding of their respective motivations and considerations for entering the care and support workforce, and that will help to inform creative development. Certainly no offence to the equally valuable care and support workers outside the target, but it is critical that the appeals we ultimately use across the campaign resonate with the intended target audience.

If you have a care and support worker that falls within the campaign target (and is based in the greater Wellington area), and that you would be prepared to make available for this very important hui, please drop a line to marcomms@careerforce.org.nz with their details (and we will get back in touch). We will provide a $50 prezzy card to each participant, cover any travel related costs, and also provide lunch. We think they will enjoy the hui, and the opportunity to share their experiences with other like-minded people.

For students of Kerikeri High School with special educational needs, their teacher aides are always alongside them – listening, understanding, and encouraging.

In the Northland's Bay of Islands, Kerikeri High School supports around 1500 students from year 7 to year 13. They have a diverse range of students from different socio-economic backgrounds and ethnicities. They are also seeing students coming through with serious and complex behavioural and learning needs. Teacher aides play a huge role in supporting these students.

Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator, Maria Halliday, says the role “has become quite specialist because they have to be so skilled now.”

“More so now than ever more, students coming through are struggling to regulate their big emotions, so they’re manifesting their struggles with ‘bad’ behaviour. Our teacher aides are working on addressing and doing more of a mentoring role to help these students regulate their big emotions. It’s not just a matter of going into a classroom sitting with a student and helping them do their work anymore.”

To ensure that teacher aides have the tools they need for the increased responsibility, Kerikeri High School decided to enroll them in the Community Facilitation Apprenticeship with Careerforce. Ten teacher aides signed up to do the apprenticeship programme that leads to the awarding of a nationally recognised level 4 qualification.

The implementation of the Reform of Vocational Education (RoVE) continues to progress, albeit slowly and reflective of the magnitude of the change, but we thought it timely to provide a high level update.

ITOs such as Careerforce have two core functions; setting skills standards and arranging workplace training. Careerforce’s function of setting skills standards for the majority of our sectors, will be transitioned to the new Community, Health, Education & Social Services Workforce Development Council (WDC), one of six WDCs being created. There have been delays in the establishment of these WDCs, and it is now anticipated that these WDCs may begin operations from August this year. This will involve the transition of some Careerforce staff who currently have responsibilities around qualification development and maintenance.

The transition of Careerforce’s other key function, that of arranging workplace training (and where we work most closely with employers), to an alternate provider, is not expected to happen until later in 2022. Over the coming months, it is our expectation that we will be conducting further stakeholder engagement to set out the transition options, and seek your feedback. In the meantime, everything continues as business as usual, and we certainly commit to letting you know when we expect elements of the transition to start impacting upon your training.

In the meantime, you can continue to find the latest updates on RoVE here. If you have any questions at all, please touch base with your regular Careerforce contact.

The Aka Toi team has collaborated with a few assessors to create an assessor feedback comment prompts sheet. In Aka Toi there is a comment field for every question. Although it isn’t required that a comment is added for each question, some assessors expressed that they like to add comments but would like help with varying them.

This document lists feedback prompts for 'Achieved' and 'More evidence required'. They are designed to be adapted to the context as needed. It is intended to be a living document, that we update with new tips, hints or prompts. The assessor feedback comment prompts sheet can be accessed on Aka Toi in the Assessor Help menu.

The New Zealand Diploma in Leadership and Management (Level 5) programme, supported by Careerforce has seen positive and impressive outcomes.

The programme is for current leaders and managers with direct reports. It recognises the skills and experience while building on their existing knowledge to manage and lead teams effectively. Managers are then able to adapt modern business practice tools and strategies into their own workplace setting and can contribute to achieving their organisation’s operational objectives.

Read about some of our past NZ Diploma in Business (Level 5) graduates working in Health & Wellbeing and Disability sectors.

The great news is that there are no enrolment fees for workplaces wishing to enrol their staff into the Careerforce business programme this year. Careerforce has made the decision to waive enrolment fees for the New Zealand Diploma in Business (Leadership and Management) (Level 5) * Enrolment fees will be waived for all enrolments up until 31 December 2021.

*For enrolments in NZ Diploma in Business (Level 5) that are eligible for Fees Free or for any applicable grants, these entitlements will take precedence over the Careerforce free enrolment offer.

Annually, Careerforce conducts an employer survey to understand your challenges and work on potential solutions to continuously improve our products, services and supports. A strong theme that consistently comes through is that you want us to engage more with trainees. In response, we have implemented communication touchpoints including the sending out of welcome emails and welcome packs, and completion emails for graduates of a number of programmes.

To support our NZQA evaluation obligations, and to gather insights that will help continuous improvements, we are now implementing graduate surveys from the 1st week of March. The survey will ask about barriers and enablers to training, supports available, as well as cover programme specific questions that will feed into future programme reviews.

For the initial release of the graduate survey, we will be sending it out to trainees who have completed their programmes from 1 September 2020 to 28 February 2021. Thereafter, graduate surveys will be scheduled to go out the first week of each month to those that have completed their certificates from the previous month.

Graduates from the following programmes will start receiving the survey from the week of 1 March.

TEC Number and Programme Name
5757     NZC Health and Wellbeing (Level 2)
5812     NZC Health and Wellbeing Support Work (Level 3)
5811     NZC Health and Wellbeing Health Assistance (Level 3)
5942     NZC Health and Wellbeing Advanced Support (Level 4)
5550     NZC Cleaning (Level 2)

The survey only takes approximately ten minutes to complete, and we would appreciate any encouragement you can provide to your graduating employees to complete the survey.

Rehab L4 – NZQA Approved
The reviewed qualification, the New Zealand Certificate in Health and Wellbeing (Rehabilitation Support) (Level 4) with strands in Brain Injury, Spinal Cord Impairment, and Chronic Illness [Ref: 2991] was approved by NZQA on 12 February. The last date for assessments to take place to meet the requirements of version 1 is 31 December 2023.

PCPA L4 – NZQA Approved
The reviewed qualification, the New Zealand Certificate in Health and Wellbeing (Primary Care Practice Assistance) (Level 4) [Ref: 2990] was approved by NZQA on 24 February. The last date for assessments to take place to meet the requirements of version 1 is 31 December 2023.