The challenge
Trafford Council’s Children and Young People’s Service engaged with Me Learning to deliver a suite of tailored online learning courses to over 2,500 staff across the council, education, health, police and voluntary and community sector, covering Information Sharing, ContactPoint, Lead Professional, Safeguarding, CAF and ICS.
The benefits
Trafford expects the training to decrease learning time and costs while increasing learning effectiveness and consistency to allow practitioners to work more effectively and collaboratively. The courses are available to all of Trafford’s multi-agency partners through a hosted and managed learning portal that tracks user activity and awards certificates. Me Learning worked closely with Trafford to tailor its portal and courses to Trafford’s branding and exact course specifications.
The results
Since December 2008, over 200 practitioners have taken and passed the online training courses. Used to supplement Trafford’s ContactPoint and Information Sharing classroom training sessions, agencies that have taken the training include: Social Workers, Health Visitors, Connexions PA’s, the Police, Youth Service, Youth Offending Service, Children’s Centres, Schools, School Support Service, Sensory Impairment Support, Housing, Voluntary and Community Support, Early Years, and CAMHS. Cathy Atherton (Interim Manager for Service Development) commented on the feedback already received from practitioners: “Initial feedback has been very positive, the system is‘easy to use’ and‘the interactivity of the courses generates more interest in learning’. A significant benefit of the training is that users can retake each course or module until they pass, so they can be awarded a certificate for a course that they may have failed previously. Furthermore, making mistakes actually improves knowledge retention, so being able to fail without repercussions or public embarrassment results in more effective learning.” “We considered several products, but chose Me Learning because of its flexibility in tailoring the online courses to suit our Integrated Working training programme. We expect 2,500 practitioners across Trafford to be using online training modules over the next two years.”
About Trafford
Trafford, one of the ten metropolitan councils making up the Greater Manchester area, is a borough of considerable diversity. Industry, commerce, towns and villages blend together and affluence and deprivation sit side-by-side.
There exist areas of significant social deprivation, which are linked to higher incidences of crime and disorder, health inequalities, barriers to higher education and employment opportunities. This area is extremely diverse in its mix of population, patterns of employment and levels of deprivation.
Trafford’s total population is 211,800 of which 52,548 are children and young people aged 0-19 years. For more information, please visit www.trafford.gov.uk
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