Training your volunteers is one of the most important tasks that a contact centre has. When this is done well your volunteers feel confident and equipped when engaging with families and they feel empowered to practice in ways that are professional and meaningful to the children and families that you support.
Excellent feedback for supervised training
100% of attendees at our supervised coordinator training earlier this year rated the overall event, the balance between discussion and direct teaching, trainer’s knowledge and materials/handouts as Excellent. This is great news and feedback. We are running this and our refresher course over the next couple of months. The feedback received by NACCC is really important to us and every comment that is made / recorded is carefully analysed to see what we could learn from and how we could develop. We live in a world where it is often easier to notice the things that do not work well and taking this into consideration the feedback being provided is beyond valuable to the people that work so hard to share their knowledge with you.
Has your Chair attended our Governance training?
Our first ever Governance Training course was held in June for Chairs of management committee with fantastic feedback that they felt “energised” and “motivated” in their role governing their centre. We hope to run the course again in 2020. We will decide about the timing of this when we have an idea of demand so do let us know if this is something you might find helpful.
Can I bring to your attention to the article on the QEL endorsement for NACCC training. This further professionalises our training delivery, resources and processes. We have worked really hard to achieve this and hope that it will reassure all our members that our training is not only robust but is also delivered in a way that meets national standards. Independent oversight is positive for any organisation and we hope to learn so much by working with the Open College Network in this way. As mentioned, you will notice some slight changes in the way that training is delivered particularly regarding the way that we evidence your learning and development. You will also be issued with professional, smart looking certificates when you engage on a training course that is certified by the programme.
As some of you may already be aware, prior to joining NACCC I qualified as a Practice Educator with Birmingham City University. This allows me to teach (social work students) at graduate and post graduate levels. Therefore, I have some experience of teaching and training delivery. In order to enhance this further and to ensure that these skills relate to NACCC Members I have recently received training from the College of Public Speaking in Training the Trainer. This course included; the skills associated with training and delivery, training different cohorts of people, recognising experience and varying learning styles, training content and the appropriateness of this, training techniques, exercises and models. This will enable me to better be able to plan for the needs of people engaging in our courses and deliver these in a more confident and coherent way.
Free training A-Z
Here at NACCC we are always on the lookout for free/low cost training to complement our in-house training programme and have therefore developed a resource for you featuring the free external training that is available across the UK. We’ve recently added Orangebox Training Solutions which offers fully funded learning (conditions apply including minimum numbers to register and complete training, often 8 people minimum). Courses include:
- Children and Young People’s Mental Health Level 2
- Understanding Safeguarding and Prevent Level 2
- Understanding Specific Learning Difficulties
- Working with People with Mental Health Needs
- Understanding Behaviour That Challenges
- Working with Individuals with Learning Disabilities
- Understanding Autism
(Please note that NACCC is not recommending any training provider as such, we are sharing this for information purposes only).
Check out our Free training A-Z
Oversees outreach
In August Elizabeth Coe (NACCC’s CEO) and I went to Singapore. They were especially keen to learn about our work and to learn from our experience spanning the last 30 years. Whilst there we provided the following training programmes; Enhanced Co-Ordinator Training, Safeguarding Children, Parental Alienation Awareness, Challenging Behaviour & Health and Safety.
Recently we have also had visitors to our Organisation from the Faculty of Intellectual Property Osaka Institute of Technology – Japan. They stayed with us for almost two weeks learning about the work of NACCC and its members. They have been able to shadow accreditations, interview NACCC Staff, observe SPIPs (Separated Parent Information Programmes) taking place as well as learning from the Family Justice Young People’s Board. As part of this work, Elizabeth Coe will be travelling to Japan and Taiwan in order to address conferences relating to Child Contact and the work of our members in the UK.
Additionally, we have been working with the Attorney General’s Department of Australian Government and the Department of Youth Affairs in Ireland sharing good practice and offering advice about what works well in the UK in order to support their development of services.
Phil Coleman, Service Development Manager
