Ageless at Work - Skills for Care

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tool box that was developed as part of the European Commission funded Fair Play for Older Workers project. The DWP European Social Fund division has also published a good practice guide on developing age-related programmes (ECOTEC, undated). While the primary audience is co-financing organisations, it contains useful information on providing learning and mentoring opportunities for older people. Skills for Care South West’s “The Value of Learning: Creating a Learning Organisation” (Skills for Care South West, 2009) also provides managers and care home owners with information about sources of funding and hints and tips about how to persuade reluctant learners to ‘give it a go’. This includes providing one-to-one support, sensitively delivered NVQs (see Tick Tock), making learning fun and informal methods. Widening knowledge about the range of learning opportunities available amongst managers can also increase take-up of training among other staff. For example, the Bournemouth, Dorset and Poole Learning Hubs Project (Howe, 2009) found that bringing third sector social care organisations together and supporting them by facilitating meetings and producing newsletters and fact sheets had raised awareness of funding for learning and of learning opportunities leading to greater participation in training: “By providing [knowledge about funding and learning opportunities] the Learning Hub has enabled the social care agencies to develop their own learning culture, and thereby have a positive impact on the development of staff skills and the quality of service provision.” Bournemouth, Dorset and Poole Learning Hubs Evaluation, 2009 It is not clear however whether this resulted in increased learning opportunities for older people specifically. A wide range of approaches therefore have been used previously to promote age positive practice in training and development, some of which have focused specifically on skills development issues and some have encompassed this within approaches that advocated sound age positive employment practice more generally. This suggests a fairly broad field of potential activity for the project that could include work with skills intermediaries (such as that approach tested by the Broker-Age project) to ensure the needs of older learners are brought into discussions between managers and skills brokers, the use of action learning sets for line managers to support them to adopt age positive practice and prevent them unwittingly (or deliberately) sidelining the skills development needs of older people. This could incorporate wider dissemination of Skills for Care South West’s The Value of Learning: Creating a Learning Organisation report. Finally, the project could support the development and/or wider adoption of learning hubs as a way of raising awareness of learning opportunities. Activities that challenge older workers’ perceptions of their ability to learn, and need for learning The research has identified a wide range of intrinsic factors (i.e. related to the individual’s attitudes, beliefs, knowledge and motivation) that feed into individuals’ behaviour and decision making around learning and training (UKES, 2009). For older workers in particular, this can include beliefs about being ‘too old’ to train, problems with basic skills and a fear of ‘going back to the classroom’. Older people by virtue of their (usually) longer tenure in their current job may also feel that they do not need to train, or feel that requesting training implies some deficiency in their skills. Over half (53%) of Ageless at Work: Change workplace cultures, development skills. Good practice report 37
‘unlikely’ learners 12 aged 55 and over either do not have any barriers to learning or are just not interested in training (Aldridge and Tuckett, 2007). That is not to say, however, that practical factors such as time and money are not significant barriers, particularly for low-paid, low skilled workers. The UKES review of employee demand for skills (2009) therefore suggests that: “Effective interventions therefore need to be targeted at promoting individuals’ self-efficacy and motivation to learn. Challenges for this agenda include the suggestion that older workers and those that consider themselves to be fully skilled for their current occupation may be more difficult to engage”. Qualitative research with employers and older people in the West Midlands (2008) also found “Resistance to training from staff who had been in a role for some time, rather than just based on age”. Employer encouragement can be a key factor in motivating older workers to undertake training. Other incentives and motivations identified by older workers include (VT Research, 2008) Free, or funded by an employer or by the government (VT Research, 2008) Other people motivated to do training Learning a new skill Earning a reasonable wage at the end Felling more valued Showing initiative to gain skills and becoming more valuable to an employer. The ReGROW programme that was piloted in the South East region during 2006/2008 is one example of a successful approach in engaging with older workers. It did so by providing information, advice and guidance in the workplace and supplementing this with mentoring and training opportunities. Employers were approached by Employer Engagement Officers, employed by the lead contractor, A4e, and by the partner agencies. Participating employers nominated employees, who then received an IAG interview with an adviser employed by one of the partner agencies. In the light of this, training needs were identified, and A4e and its partners brokered appropriated training. Most employees also received on-going mentoring from IAG staff, either face-to-face or by phone. This was one of the largest attempts to provide guidance to older workers ever conducted. A very large majority of employees taking part in the programme reported that they had found the IAG helpful, enjoyable and relevant, that it improved their skills, and that the adviser understood their needs and the options available (over 80% for each of these). When asked whether they thought that ReGrow had made a difference to them: Two thirds thought that the training had helped them to do their jobs better and that it had improved their self confidence Half said that it had increased the likelihood of their doing more learning in the future A third said that ReGrow had increased the likelihood that they would stay in work longer 12 This includes all respondents to the 2005 NIACE Adult Learners Survey who had finished full time education and were not ‘very likely’ to take up learning in the next three years. 38 Ageless at Work: Change workplace cultures, development skills. Good practice report
Page 1 and 2: we help create a trained and qualif
Page 3 and 4: CONTENTS 1. Introduction ..........
Page 5 and 6: Index of Tables Table 1 Six things
Page 7 and 8: While organisational change had bee
Page 9 and 10: 2. POLICY CONTEXT Why and how is ad
Page 11 and 12: Ensuring the right steps are taken
Page 13 and 14: Table 3 Workforce remodelling: prio
Page 15 and 16: What is already happening to suppor
Page 17 and 18: Personalisation agenda as set out i
Page 19 and 20: Responses to an open question about
Page 21 and 22: What works in enhancing leadership
Page 23 and 24: Skills for Care London also trailed
Page 25 and 26: Table 7 Engage the workforc
Page 27 and 28: Table 8 What needs to be done to in
Page 29 and 30: • Support and enable people to us
Page 31 and 32: People who use services as drivers
Page 33 and 34: There is also evidence that older p
Page 35 and 36: - Training conflicted with the work
Page 37: articulate the experience, knowledg
Page 41 and 42: personalisation’. The results of
Page 43 and 44: Mentoring is cited as a “fundamen
Page 45 and 46: • Yearly (or more frequent) suppo
Page 47 and 48: Secondly, the project could test ne
Page 49 and 50: Figure 2 Vacancies notified to Jobc
Page 51 and 52: A recent survey by the ADASS/LGA (2
Page 53 and 54: Figure 5 Projected working age popu
Page 55 and 56: Table 15 Trends and drivers affecti
Page 57 and 58: Table 16 Health status of the popul
Page 59 and 60: Table 16 Main features of the ‘in
Page 61 and 62: 6. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PROJECT ACTI
Page 63 and 64: Activities that challenge older wor
Page 65 and 66: ECOTEC (Undated) European Social Fu
Page 67: Tick Tock (2007) Tick Tock: An EQUA

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