Ageless at Work - Skills for Care

have been encouraged to submit a further funding application to build on this initiative by
incorporating job search activities.
On-line courses may also be appropriate to older learners. An American study found that
underrepresented groups were better represented in on-line courses than they were in face-to-face
courses (Swindon and Thompson, 2000). Online medium provides more privacy and safety – a
suggestion also made in qualitative study of an online professional development course. “More
research is needed to know whether online courses provide a better entry point for members of
underrepresented groups. Regardless, e-learning designers and planners should consider less
educated groups when making design decisions (e.g. reading level required, level of technical and
computer expertise needed, making less educated individuals feel safe and comfortable.”
Where skills development provision is delivered in formal educational settings, it is important that
facilities are seen as accessible and user-friendly for non-traditional learners. “Research with college
sector providers in the 1990s identified an ‘image problem’ among some non-traditional adult learners,
who viewed the college sector as defined by large, functional buildings, basic facilities and ‘crowds of
young people’” (Tremlett et al, 1995).
This aspect of the good practice review suggests that are opportunities for review existing training
courses within adult social care to establish whether they are ‘age positive’ and to support training
providers in designing and delivering courses that are attractive to older learners, at different levels of
ability. The Tick Tock project also illustrated mainstream provision can be adjusted to accommodate
the needs of those with poor basic skills and there may be opportunities for further develop this work
by integrating Skills for Life provision into the programme. There may also be opportunities to explore
the potential to use on-line courses to support the skills development of older learners.
Implications for project activity
To sum up, the good practice research suggests four potential areas of project activity in supporting
the skills development of older workers:
The first area includes activities that seek to promote age positive staff development policies and
practice to ensure that older workers are not discriminated against in the distribution of skills
development opportunities. A wide range of approaches have been used previously to some of
which have focused specifically on skills development issues and some have encompassed this
within approaches that 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 adopt age positive practice and prevent
them unwittingly (or deliberately) sideline 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 Leaning 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.
Ageless at Work: Change workplace cultures, development skills. Good practice report 45