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The Children's Society - YMCA Employer of the Year
12 March 2019
The Children’s Society has won the YMCA Employer of the Year Award. The charity, which tackles child poverty and neglect, take on apprentices who are either existing staff or external applicants, meaning that they develop both their own staff through Continuing Professional Development (CPD) or introduce new talent to the organisation.
Since April last year, the charity has trained 11 learners. They have a ‘just in time and just for you’ approach to learning and support bite size learning and mentoring across the organisation. All learners have grown in confidence by having their skills and qualities reinforced and some have even taken on extra responsibilities such as supporting their manager, completing store audits or developing other shop supervisors.
Jemma Molloy who is the Children's Society’s Learning and Development Manager, received the award on behalf of the charity:
“We are delighted to receive this award. We like the synergy between the Children’s Society and Central YMCA – both being charities that support vulnerable young people. It’s felt like a partnership from the very beginning and the YMCA has supported us in our apprenticeship scheme every step of the way. We’ve inducted our first cohort of very enthusiastic apprentices and are just about to start a second cohort of learners!”
An opportunity to diversify staff
“We have taken a positive approach to the apprenticeship levy and see it as an opportunity to develop our staff and bring in new talent. We want to maximise the funds that we have available to us and not dismiss the levy as a tax like some organisations have done, which seems unethical to us. We have a 5 year strategy to utilise our apprenticeship levy to develop talent within the organisation, to create more opportunities for young people and to diversify our staff base. We offer mentors to our learners to give them support whilst completing their apprenticeship. We believe that apprenticeships are great for their professional development.”