Apprenticeship Journey

.... to the June newsletter. This is a bi-monthly newsletter for all Careerforce apprentices.

What an extraordinary past few months. We hope you’ve had the time to reconnect with your extended families and with your friends. Please continue to be safe and be kind.

To all those who were able to continue with their apprenticeship learning and assessment during the lockdown, we do appreciate your efforts. We hope that most of you are now in a position to continue with your apprenticeships. Speak to your Apprenticeship Advisor if you are still not quite ready to get back into it so they can ensure that they give you the space and support that you need. They can also help you to re-assess and review your training plan and study goals.

In this issue we share some tips on joining Microsoft Teams video calls. Don’t worry, it’s not any more complicated than Zoom. As we slowly work in the ‘new normal’ we are encouraging our Apprenticeship Advisors to continue using technology as much as possible to connect with all of you. In the Nailing that Assessment section, we encourage you to reflect upon your own rahui or lockdown experiences and where you could use them in your assessments.

We also have Aka Toi Tips and a few other reminders and announcements in this issue.

Although it’s not as good as having a face-to-face meeting, we think it’s worth carrying on with video calls for the time-being as we adjust to our new normal. Careerforce has invested in teleconferencing capabilities using Microsoft Teams, and your Apprenticeship Advisors may be using this technology more often for your pastoral care sessions.

Here are some instructions on joining a Teams meeting. As a general note, you don’t need to have Microsoft Teams to be able to join a Teams meeting. It pays to join the meeting a little earlier, so you have time to follow the instructions.

When you receive the meeting request from your Apprenticeship Advisor, respond by selecting Accept or Decline and letting them know a suitable time to have the meeting.
Once you have accepted the meeting invite from your mail application (Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail), you can access the content of the meeting by opening it. Select the “Join Microsoft Teams Meeting”
When the web browser (e.g. Chrome) launches, select “Cancel” and then select “Join on the web instead”.

Please note that we cannot accept answers that are copied directly from learning resources or any other sources. If you do use information from the learning material or other sources, please clearly identify this by providing references. Your Apprenticeship Advisors would like to remind everyone that not only is this unacceptable practice, but also challenging for them to ascertain your actual understanding when this is done.

Use your own words to describe, explain, and give examples. Taking time to think about, interpret, and write with your own words could save you more time than copying and pasting the text, as rest assured, your Apprenticeship Advisor will ask you to re-do your work.

Nailing that Assessment
Your Apprenticeship Advisors encourage you to reflect upon your experiences during the rahui / lockdown. You can use these reflections in your assessments. Here are some examples of questions to ask yourselves to help you reflect and the modules you may use them for:
Be awesome – Remember that leadership doesn’t just involve leading other people. Leadership could be about leading yourself too.
·         How did you demonstrate leadership during the rahui?
·         Did you play a leadership role at home or at work?
Be aware – People are feeling more vulnerable, scared or anxious during the rahui.
·         Did you respond to situations of vulnerability?
·         Did you support people to transition into or out of the rahui?
It’s about people
·         How did you adapt your practice to support people’s holistic needs when they were feeling isolated from their community and usual activities?
Be your own friend
·         How did you support your own wellbeing?
·         How did you look after yourself?
·         Did you do something new or different to help you manage your wellbeing?
It’s about you
·         How have things changed for you?
·         Have you reflected on how the rahui affected you and the people you support?

Earlier in June, the Government announced details around the $320m Targeted Training and Apprenticeships Fund (TTAF), just one part of the $1.6b Trades and Apprenticeships training package recently announced in the 2020 Budget. This is an exciting development, and is very good news for our sectors.

In short, the fund will remove costs for eligible programmes in targeted areas for learners, apprentices and employers, for the next two and a half years, from 1 July through to December 2022. This includes all apprenticeship programmes.

For more information, go here. The finer details of how TTAF will work, including eligibility criteria, are still being finalised, and we will update this web page with more information as it becomes available.

If there is someone you know who would benefit from completing an apprenticeship programme, let your Apprenticeship Advisor know – now is a great time to start an apprenticeship programme. Our Apprenticeship Advisor can then have a chat with them to determine their suitability, and explain what is involved.

A small update is being made to the assessment of APP125 It’s about diversional therapy care plans (US 5795, 23918) resulting in a re-issue. The update in Aka Toi will be rolled out on 15 June 2020 between 7-11am.

Changes

One new question in (assessment) Task 2 Describe the role and skills of a diversional therapists. The addition of one extra question is a result of updates made by the
New Zealand Society of Diversional and Recreational Therapy (NZSDRT) to their Standards of Practice. This update to the Standards of Practice saw the number of standards increase from 6 to 7.
The Assessor Guideline has been updated to reflect the change in the assessment.
Leaning materials where updated to include the latest information of the NZSDRT Standards of Practice.

Apprentice Impact

Apprentices who have not yet opened (or started) the assessment for this module will access the updated (new) version of the assessment if they open the assessment after 15 June.
Apprentices who have already opened the assessment (or started) will complete the current version of the assessment.
New enrollments (new apprentices) will always see the latest assessment.

This module is part of the Careerforce NZ Apprentice programme for the specialisation in Diversional Therapy as part of the Community Facilitation strand, leading to the New Zealand Certificate in Health and Wellbeing (Social and Community) (Level 4).