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GoldStar - Promoting good practice in managing volunteers from socially excluded groups


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Accredited training

For many volunteers from socially excluded backgrounds, success will be the completion of an accredited training programme, not only from the point of view of personal achievement, but also as a step toward paid employment or further volunteering. It should be noted however that while this may be a critical success factor for the training of some volunteers, it might not be appropriate for others.

 

Below are a few examples of how other organisations have accoplished this:

The Renewal, Refugee and Migrant project provides mentor training that is accredit by the open college network London.
View Good Practice Guideline

Cheetham Hill Advice centre works with Manchester Adult Education Service to provide a ten day advice work training course.
View Good Practice Guideline

Age Concern Islington provides IT training for admin volunteers who are working towards ECDL/CLAIT accreditation.
View Good Practice Guideline

 

Renewal, Refugee and Migrant project

The mentor training is delivered in 10 weekly sessions spread over two and a half months. The weekly session runs for three hours between 10-1pm on Saturdays or between 5.30pm and 8.30 pm during weekdays. After three trial training sessions mentors are matched with mentees. Subsequent training continues side by side with mentoring activities until the ten sessions are completed. This enables mentors to apply what they have learnt in class into their mentoring practices in the training sessions.

The mentors training is accredited by the Open College Network London (OCN).

The accreditation offers volunteers at RAMP the opportunity to work towards a qualification during their volunteering. The qualification is a National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) that is accredited at levels 2 and 3.

The ten training sessions are structured as follows:

The structure of the training programme is set out in more detail in the RAMP Mentor Training Brochure.

                        

 

Cheetham Hill Advice Centre

Potential volunteers receive a an in house 10-day Advice Work Training Course, that is currently delivered through a franchise with Manchester Adult Education Service and accredited by the Open College Network North West Region. This “professionalisation” of volunteer training has ensured that the Projects systems withstood the scrutiny of auditors and other regulators and provided assurance for volunteers that they were received a high standard of training. The advice work training course has been one of the major achievements of the project so far, in terms of:

The project has also developed a clear progression route for volunteers and created links between academic learning and practical reality. Initially the 10-day course was viewed as an Induction Course, held in a training room offsite, which had to be completed before volunteers started volunteering at the Centre. It was found that this separated the course too much from the volunteering in the Centre and that some volunteers found the transition from the “classroom” to the “workplace” quite difficult. Some learners were only really interested in the qualification and not volunteering in the Centre at all, whereas others who preferred to learn by “doing” were frustrated by having to complete the whole course first.

To address this issue the course and activities at the Centre were packaged in such a way, as it has to be done together. As new volunteers learn about the principles of advice work on the course, such as confidentiality, they are also observing how these principles are worked out in practice in the advice centre at the same time. Volunteers also complete induction tasks in the Centre, such as telephone and door answering, and using the computer network, so that they begin to feel involved in the life of the Centre from an early stage. This approach has helped volunteers to settle in more quickly and feel part of advice team, develop working relationships between new volunteers and other staff members, and assisted volunteers with differing learning preferences to successfully engage with the volunteering experience. Once volunteers begin to advise in the Centre, CHAC are then able to offer them further training, both internal and external, as well as work shadowing and support to develop towards more complex casework such as representing clients at Appeal Tribunals.

The taught sessions are complimented by “in house” activities to induct volunteers as to the office procedures and observational tasks in preparation for beginning to advise clients. Part of the training includes assessed role-plays to determine when a volunteer is ready to start seeing clients. There is then a progression for volunteers from filling in basic forms for clients, through to giving basic information advice to clients, to the volunteer managing their own caseload and eventually being mentored to assist with and then conduct their own, tribunal cases. The speed of progression and destination of each volunteer is dependent on their own individual development plans. For example, at present some volunteers only fill in forms, whilst others are assisting with tribunal cases with a view to securing paid employment in advice work in the near future.

                             

Age Concern Islington

Age Concern Islington (ACI) is the primary voluntary sector body working for and with older Islington residents. It's work is about quality of life, seeking to ensure that older people and their carers are able to maintain their self respect and independence, and that they are able to enjoy freedom of choice and equal opportunities.

Age Concern Islington manages a number of diverse projects and activities and has developed good practice with the aim of ensuring that volunteers are given training that is appropriate for their individual roles. The main features of this practice are as follows:

 

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