CARE EXPERIENCED VOCATIONAL LEARNERS
Welcome to your weekly blog post. Every week, I share with you my thinking on a residential care, foster care and/or transitioning from care topic. This week I’m talking about care experienced vocational learners. If you find this content relevant and useful, please feel free to forward it on to someone else. All 50+ previous blog posts, covering a wide variety of OOHC topics, are now available on the website at https://www.betteroutcomes.org.nz/better-outcomes-blog
A week ago, we needed a plumber. I got up on the Saturday morning to find the bathroom floor was wet with water dripping from the ceiling. I got a plastic dustbin to catch the drips, and put a couple of holes in the ceiling for the water to run through so the ceiling didn’t collapse. My hope was that it was just an easily fixed leaking pipe. However, there had been heavy rain that night, so a slipped roof tile was certainly a possibility. Turned out that the hot water tank was leaking and a few stressful days later we had a new gas water heating system. A couple of things struck one about this:
In our area plumbers (and electricians) are in very high demand. Our usual plumber was about to go into hospital so couldn’t come round. We were in touch with six other plumbers before we found one who was willing to help us out. At one point it looked as if we would also need to get an electrician and two of the companies that we contacted said that they had a 4 week waiting list for domestic jobs!
Plumbing can also be very lucrative – fixing this problem cost us NZ$6k.
As a residential worker in Scotland way back in the day, I certainly recall that some of our young people in care, and care leavers, went into trades. Ryan worked in the butchery department of one of the town’s supermarkets, and while there were one or two bumps along the way, he had a very supportive manager and went on to become a fully-qualified butcher. Norman struggled with school but loved cooking, and I was thrilled to meet him years later when we went to our local restaurant for a meal – he was the chef! But Ryan and Norman were the exceptions, and I certainly don’t remember any being apprentices in the building trades. Most went into unskilled jobs and often these only lasted a few weeks – while back then there were almost always jobs in Fraserburgh and Peterhead’s fish processing factories, that was smelly, hard and cold, work.
As most of you will know, my 2015 doctorate was on and with care leavers who went to university. I have a profound belief in the transformative power of education and the need for more care experienced young people and adults to get the opportunity to go to university. But while having high expectations is important, university is not for everyone – and nor should it be.
So how good are we at encouraging and supporting young people in care who have an aptitude for a trade? We don’t really know. There are certainly some pockets of good practice out there. For example, two of the four universities that are part of the Raising Expectations initiative in Victoria, Australia are what are called dual-sector universities – as well as offering higher (academic-based) education they also offer vocational (skills-based) courses that elsewhere in Australia would be offered at a TAFE (Technical and Further Education college). And in Scotland, Kibble offers a range of tertiary education programmes for young people (age 15-26, including care leavers) that give them the opportunity to gain qualifications while undertaking work-based learning through tailored education and supported employment. Internationally we’re also beginning to see more research in this area.
However, one obstacle is our own lack of knowledge and understanding around skill-based vocational courses. Most of us went to university and that is the learning pathway that we are most familiar with. Notwithstanding the use of digital platforms, university education is essentially the same as it was 10, 50 or 500 years ago. On the other hand, most organisational leaders, managers, policy analysts, social workers, and many residential workers will know little about vocational training. Some foster carers may, but their knowledge and understanding may be out-of-date, as much of vocational education has changed significantly over recent years.
Education is critically important. But so is vocational learning, along with the work experience and the development of employability skills that come with that. Do you know a care experienced plumber?
And as ever, thanks again from me for the important work that you do.
Kia kaha (Stay Strong).
Iain
PS – Ready when you are. Here are some ways I can help you:
Check out our website at http://betteroutcomes.org.nz and watch out for the new resources being added over the coming weeks. NEW one page summary of 2015 doctoral research on care leavers, care and education now available.
Online 3 month coaching program for managers or teams on extended foster care and accommodation for those transitioning from care. Email Iain for a brochure and/or conversation at iain@betteroutcomes.org.nz
NEW Online 6 month coaching programme for managers or teams, on raising educational achievement. Email Iain for a brochure and/or conversation at iain@betteroutcomes.org.nz
Work or partner with us at Better Outcomes on bespoke webinars, masterclasses, training, consultancy, or designing and delivering a research or evaluation project. Contact me at iain@betteroutcomes.org.nz so that we can explore ideas and both decide on whether we are a good fit for each other.