This week I have spent time out in the community seeing all of our young people on placement. I have followed our pre-interns and Future Finders students and have been amazed by their hard work and professionalism. From making beds at The Premier Inn to 1:1 play sessions with dogs and cats in care at the RSPCA, our students really have impressed me! As always, the feedback from all of our employers has been overwhelmingly positive. Our students are valued members of staff and are treated accordingly.

As you know, we like to personalise our offer of work placements and internships to ensure that students work within areas that they have a particular interest in. Kayleigh on our Future Finders course is extremely interested in working in hair and beauty and so is currently on placement at a hairdressers in Shaw. Here she is in action..

Our newest employer to come on board is the RSPCA and this week they were visited by the National Director of the charity who spent time chatting to our students on placement and was extremely impressed with our pre-internship scheme. Here are some pictures of the students down at the RSPCA..

This moves us on nicely to this week’s ‘Day in the life of…..’ which follows Keiffer over at the RSPCA shelter in Oldham..

A day in the life of Keiffer

RSPCA Volunteer, Oldham

My first job is to sign in. This is so that in the event of a fire they know exactly who is in the building at all times, and to make sure that I am on time for work….

Once I have changed into my uniform I must follow all the Health and Safety procedures and put on my gloves and apron..

Then I begin my jobs for the day. There is a lot of cleaning involved; this is so that infection does not carry between the animals and also to keep the area clean and tidy..

Once all the cleaning has been completed, I then move onto my next job which is to spend time with the animals. This to help them to get used to being around people and to comfort them..

I then write up the behaviour of the animal and this will be shown to anyone who is looking to adopt an animal..

Once all my jobs are completed I sign back out and head home..

All in a day’s work!

Mr Handrick has an update for us on the Digit4ll Key Stage 5 group..

This week we had a visitor come to work with us from Oldham Coliseum..

Don’t worry, the lads won’t be appearing on a stage near you any time soon as they are 100% certain they want to be on the other side of the camera and are hoping to be filming some shows in 2018 at the Coliseum!

We were lucky enough to have Sarah join us and work with the lads on their presentation skills..

I am sure you are all fully aware of the success the team had with young enterprise last year but we don’t like to sit still for any length of time and hope that we will be pitching our products again soon. Sarah was helping the team with the skills to be more confident when speaking in front of strangers, this could be when selling our products at the Christmas market, talking in meetings or telling an audience about the wonderful things we do here at Medtia. The team said how good it was working with Sarah and I’m sure it will build on the strengths that the team has..

Activ8 have also had a good week as Mr Greenway explains..

Activ8 particularly enjoyed their Living Skills lesson when they discussed ways of improving their mental wellbeing. Inspired by their visit from Luke Ambler a few weeks ago they have been looking at reducing stress, tension and anger. This week they looked at yoga..

All of the lads did really well and behaved very maturely and said they felt a real benefit from the session. Many of them remarked that they felt relaxed and calm afterwards!!

A slightly shorter blog than usual this week…it’s been such a busy one! I look forward to updating you next time on what we have been up to in the last week of the half term. Have a wonderful weekend,

Daniel
Director of Employment & Co Head of Site at Medtia Square

You can view our previous blog entries here

Click here for this week’s news from Graham