Apprenticeship Support
Our comprehensive wrap-around service acknowledges the unique challenges that apprenticeships present and the need for comprehensive and sustainable support for progress and success.
Working in partnership with the apprentice, training provider, and employer, we offer a range of support services addressing every aspect of the apprentice’s learning journey.
Our focus on individualized support ensures that each apprentice can further develop their unique strengths and talents, enabling them to use their skills and experience to excel during apprenticeship and in their future careers.
Through our wrap-around support, we make apprenticeships accessible, meaningful, and valuable for everyone involved.
OUR 5-STEP WRAP-AROUND SUPPORT PACKAGE
Tailored academic and wellbeing support: Our service includes identifying course-specific learning support needs mapped to the Knowledge, Skills, and Behaviors (KSBs) linked to the apprentices’ requirements of the apprenticeship training course and the end-point assessment requirements. We match each apprentice with an appropriate support worker, who will work with them on a 1:1 basis throughout their apprenticeship. Support workers provide ongoing academic and wellbeing support, guidance and promote work-life balance to empower each apprentice to achieve their goals and develop the skills they need to succeed during their apprenticeship and in their future careers.
Initial Assessments: We provide assessments of learning needs, recommendations for reasonable adjustments for learning, study skills, mental health support and conduct regular reviews and adjust the tailored support to achieve targeted outcomes. Our services are designed to support apprentices who require additional support to overcome barriers to successful completion of the apprenticeship.
Expert support workers: Our support workers are led by a team of experts in mental health and neurodiversity, bringing over 20 years of evidence-based practice to their work. They are equipped to provide the highest quality of support to our apprentices, regardless of their learning needs. Our support workers receive ongoing training to ensure they stay up to date with the latest research and best practices in the field.
Additional services: We offer consultancy, specialist training, and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programmes to Inclusion and Wellbeing teams, Learning Coaches, employees, and senior management at all levels of an organization. Our aim is to upskill and introduce new ways of thinking and working to better support neurodivergent learners to work and thrive. By investing in our additional services, organizations can create a more inclusive and supportive learning environment for all their apprentices.
INDIVIDUAL LEARNER PLANS (ILP)FOR APPRENTICESHIP LEARNERS
We provide each apprentice with an Individual Learning Plan (ILP), a person-centred and collaborative document that outlines their academic, employment,and personal goals. The ILP is created following an initial screening and learning needs assessment, and it encourages the apprentice, employer, and training provider to work together to set specific, measurable goals to achieve during support sessions. The ILP is focused on helping the apprentice understand and develop the skills needed to achieve their full academic, employment, emotional, and social potential in relation to the specific requirements of their apprenticeship course. By ensuring all parties are clear on the learner’s goals and needs, we can provide targeted support that leads to excellence in relation to the KSBs of the specific apprenticeship program. This approach ensures that apprentices receive optimal support and training, resulting in the most positive individual outcomes.
Supporting neurodivergent learners necessitates high levels of encouragement and engagement. Written in collaboration between the support worker, training provider and the learner, ILPs help boost learner engagement and motivation, build their confidence and learning skills, and provide essential feedback. With goals and targets presented in a clear, concise, and accessible format which links back to the KSBs of the apprenticeship course, it provides each learner with their own personal journey. This in turn helps learners feel more empowered, and more likely to achieve success in their apprenticeship and studies. Training providers can also use this information to ensure they provide the support, feedback and advice that meets the unique needs of their learners.
OUR SUPPORT ROLES
Weekly 1hr 1:1 session with a support worker delivered remotely. The frequency of sessions would be dependent on the needs of the learner, and this would be identified within their Assessment of Learning Need.
Specialist 1:1 Study Skills Support is individual support for learners with Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD), which may include Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Dyscalculia. Support is mapped to the specific needs of the learner in relation to their apprenticeship course and the required KSBs of their training program. Study Skills Support will additionally target difficulties with acquiring, recalling, and retaining information in written and spoken language. Memory, organisational, attention and numeracy difficulties are often also worked on. Using a range of multi-sensory strategies to facilitate independent learning, sessions will be tailored to work on the identified needs of specific learners to enable learners to identify their own learning styles and strengths. Independent learning is promoted as well as empowering the learner to manage their workload across both the theoretical and work-based placement components of their course.
Study Skills Tutors can help with:
- time management and organisational skills
- efficient strategies for reading academic texts
- note taking from texts, hand-outs and in lectures
- research skills
- mind mapping and planning techniques
- proof reading strategies
- approaching written assignments
- memory techniques and strategies
- revision methods
- analysing exam/essay questions
- coping with anxiety and stressful situations
- how to deal with concentration difficulties
- time management
- goal setting
- timetabling
- prioritising workload
- creating a suitable work-life balance
Specialist mentoring is not counselling. The role of the mentor is to help learners recognise the barriers to learning and support them in developing strategies to address these barriers, particularly at times of transition and possible high stress, e.g., when starting at a new work-based placement or working towards end-point assessments. For some learners, this support will need to be on-going, while for others it might be gradually phased out or only be required at certain points of their course.
Mentors can work with learners with a range of mental health difficulties, including:
- depression
- anxiety
- eating disorders
- bipolar disorder
- psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia
- obsessive compulsive disorder etc
Specialist autism and ADHD Mentors hold an in-depth knowledge and practical strategies to work alongside autistic and ADHD apprentices to support them succeed in their studies and work placements. Through psychoeducation, allowing the learner to better understand how autism and /or ADHD impacts on their learning, targeted plans to assist the learner develop the required knowledge, skills, and behaviour (KSBs) in their apprenticeship course can be achieved. Improved psychoeducation can allow the individual to better work to their strengths as well as better advocate their needs in terms of reasonable adjustments. Work placements can bring a wealth of challenges for autistic and ADHD learners and working with a specialist mentor to manage transitions, work-based socialising, professional expectations alongside the course requirements can allow the learner to build sustainable strategies around experienced difficulties. The aim is to gradually reduce the need for specialist mentoring support as the learner build their own skills, so that they can fully engage in their academic life and integrate successfully into the workplace on leaving their education.
Our mentors typically assist with such things as:
- managing change and difficult emotions
- dealing with challenging social situations
- developing social and communication skills
- clarifying course expectations in relation to set KSBs on the apprenticeship course
- having a healthy work/life balance
- accessing academic support and guidance
- managing course requirements (e.g., speaking in seminars, giving presentations, professional meetings)
- Developing self-awareness and self-advocacy
- advising on quiet (low-sensory) study spaces
- any other issues that the learner brings to the sessions
