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Kellogg’s Breakfast Club grant

We are chuffed as chips to announce that our ACT Schools provision in both Cardiff and Caerphilly have been awarded a Kellogg’s Breakfast Club grant to help make sure our learners get a decent meal at the beginning of the day. A big thank you to FareShare who have been hugely supportive in setting this up.

Support for Llamau learners

We are pleased to report that we have four learners from Llamau who are enrolling onto them prepare for their transition to our vocational courses when face to face delivery resumes in the future.

Whatever challenges we may currently be facing, ensuring our learners have all the support they need is our number one priority!

Wellbeing resources

We have a number of resources on our intranet pages dedicated to wellbeing advice, tips for surviving at home during lockdown, opportunities our ‘Digital Taster Sessions’, in order to help

to build on your CPD training, how to work from home and a whole lot more. Head to the intranet to find out more

The Beauty Room

The Beauty Room at OPH donated plastic aprons, gloves and some masks to Belevista Care Home in Harrowby Street, Cardiff Bay. Many care homes are currently struggling for protective equipment so the donation is hugely appreciated.

The animals at our Hadfield Road centre are doing great!

For those of you who have been asking, we just wanted to let you know that the animals at our Hadfield Road centre are doing great. Laura Richards, Animal Care Assessor said, “The animals are all doing well and loving the peace and quiet. Staff are travelling back and forth all week to check on them. Terry the terrapin has even had a new fancy waterfall filter installed, which he thinks is amazing!”. A big thank you to the Animal Care Team for all your hard work and a special thank you to all those who have been checking in on the animals.

Our Food Bank is still going strong!

We are incredibly proud to report that our Food Bank based out of the OPH café, has now been running for 12 weeks. The services we have been providing to our most vulnerable learners and the wider community has proven to be invaluable.

We currently have 72 households that we are delivering to every week with our amazing café staff Graham White, Daniel Griffiths and Jodie Smith creating approximately 800 meals per week. We have been receiving 1.2 tons of donated food from FareShare per month, all of which would have ended up in landfill. In addition, big name businesses such as Costa, Greggs, Pizza Express, Nandos and McDonalds have also been donating food deliveries.

We would like to give a big thanks to everyone who has been involved, particularly all the staff volunteers who have helped deliver packages to our learners. Also, an enormous thanks and standing ovation to Emma Page who has been key in organising the food bank from day one. A big thanks to Matt Burnett and Sarah Stokes too, who have been helping Emma to coordinate everything.

Helping feed frontline workers

Every week we deliver a food drop off to staff at St David’s Hospital in Cardiff. We are so grateful to the NHS and all our frontline workers for taking care of us all during this time, so were grateful for the opportunity to show our support!

Oasis Centre

The Oasis centre in Splott were in desperate need of flour to continue making bread for the refugees and asylum seekers they support. Thankfully we were able to source them a large bag from our suppliers, which resulted in 54 baked bread rolls to feed their service users.

Scrubs for the NHS

A big round of applause to Nickie Rainsford-Lewis and Natasha Kingsbury who have both been making and donating scrub bags so that their local NHS staff can take off their uniforms and put them straight in the wash. Well done to you both for your amazing efforts!

Did you know… In the last 30 days at ACT, there have been 20,496 messages, 1602 calls, and 1899 meetings! We have not forgotten how to email though – we have sent 74,947 of those! These statistics show just how well everyone is adapting to remote working!

Working tirelessly to deliver NHS Core Induction digitally

An enormous round of applause to Angela Clifford-Hillman, Helen Aldridge, Alison Phillips and Gareth Mathias who have been working tirelessly to deliver the NHS core induction for Aneurin Bevan digitally online. On Easter Good Friday they received 147 learners and by the end of the Easter week had 350, with 50-100 learners logging on daily. These learners are a mix of recalled NHS staff, 3rd year nursing students and members of the public, wanting to do their bit during the Covid-19 outbreak. The success of this delivery is the result of incredible teamwork across many teams. A huge thank you to all these staff members who sacrificed their Easter Break to help support the NHS at a time of need. The delivery of this training has ensured an extra 52 Health Care Social Workers are able to enter the NHS. This number has been increasing daily with the additional support of the whole Clinical Health/Facilities Service Team who are all on board working hard. Thank you so much to every single one of you – you are all super stars!

MTS sub-provider providing free forklift training to FareShare

Following a call to action from ACT, Ian Bills who owns and operates South Wales and Southwest Forklift, one of MTS’ sub-providers, is volunteering for FareShare 2 days a week. Ian has also been offering free forklift training to fellow FareShare volunteers to help store and put away food deliveries at the warehouse.

Suzanne Meredith and Kristen Evans.

An enormous round of applause to our ACT Health & Social Care assessors Suzanne Meredith and Kristen Evans.

Suzanne is currently working overtime to support the Red Cross while Kristen is helping to support at REACT. Thank you so much for all the fantastic work you are both doing to help others - we salute you!

A&E Support

An enormous thanks to Daniel James, a Clinical Health Assessor, who in addition to working his full hours supporting learners, is also working weekend shifts at University Hospital Wales in Cardiff. Daniel is currently stepping up to support in the A&E department of the hospital as the NHS battle to deal with this pandemic. Thank you so much Daniel!

Louise Small

A ginormous shout out to Louise Small, one of our Clinical Health learners who usually works in Urology Theatre but due to the current pandemic has been deployed to intensive care. This absolute hero of a lady is not only working on the frontline, but alongside this is also still trying to complete her Clinical Health diploma and juggle her family responsibilities, with a young daughter at home. Louise thank you so much from everyone here at ACT. We could not be prouder or more grateful!

Free digital fitness workouts in exchange for food donations

A big thanks to Nathan Blackwell, Partner Manager, who has been offering free fitness classes on Facebook in exchange for food donations to gift his local community. To date, he has delivered four food packages to the Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend, three to local care homes and one to a mental health unit. Well done Nathan!

Baked by Lou raising money for Cardiff charities

A big thank you to Louisa Mallett, Business Services Apprenticeship Trainer who donated 25% of her online shop proceeds to charity during part of the lockdown. Lou successfully raised £305.60 which she will be donating between two Cardiff charities – The Wallich (helping homelessness) and Oasis (helping refugees and asylum seekers). Thank you, Lou!

ACT Learner named ‘Welsh Apprentice of the Year’

We are proud to share that one of our learners, James Phillips was named ‘Welsh Apprentice of the Year’ at the MHFED / City & Guild National Barber Competitions in March. Despite only barbering for just over a year, James, 17, who is currently studying his Level 2 NVQ Diploma in Barbering with ACT, was nominated by his employer, Avenue Male Grooming. James commented, “My boss put me on an Apprenticeship with ACT as soon as I started at Avenue, so I’m so happy to have won this award. Once I’ve completed my Level 2 with ACT, I want to start on my Level 3 straightaway. Lesley Hanson my assessor has been a wicked help! I just want to get as many ualifications as possible so I can achieve my goal of becoming the best barber I can possibly be.” A huge well done to James on his success and to Lesley Hanson for supporting James to achieve his goals!

Record OneFile Usage Daily Usage and engagement with OneFile has increased by 33% compared to 2019. April 2020 saw a record 370,307 recorded events on our OneFile account, which is a huge increase compared to 2019 (257,740). A big shout out to our Traineeships Team who are now also completing their digital reviews via OneFile too.

Skills Competition Wales An enormous congratulations to all our learners from our Traineeship and Apprenticeship programmes who participated in Skills Competition Wales in February. The competition aims to raise the profile of skills in Wales and offers students, trainees and apprentices in Wales a chance to challenge, benchmark and raise their skills by taking part in competitions across a range of sectors. Funded by the Welsh Government, the competition is run by a dedicated network of colleges, work-based learning providers and employer-led organisations. A massive round of applause to all our learners who participated on the day, particularly those who secured medals. Well done to: Alex Beaumont, Coby Jay Barratt, Angela Driscoll, Rebeka Geciova, Marmalade Ball, Ellis Potter, Mollie Jones and Kathryn Rees. Each competitor’s achievements are a direct result of their hard work, determination and dedication through the competition and training processes. A huge thanks also to their incredibly supportive tutors at ACT: Rebecca Broad, Loren Latchman, Mary Foley, Leah Howell, Karen Richards, Navvab Vaughan and Hayley Carter.

We were incredibly proud to have the following learners representing ACT in the competition:

TRAINEESHIPS

Alex Beaumont, Business Services, Copy Typing & Formatting Text & Data Daniel Hopkins, Information Technology, Copy Typing & Formatting Text & Data Coby Jay Barratt, Information Technology, Copy Typing & Formatting Text & Data Angela Driscoll, Hairdressing,Beauty & Barbering, Inclusive Hairdressing Rebeka Geciova, Hairdressing, Beauty & Barbering, Inclusive Hairdressing Eden Kemp, Hairdressing, Beauty & Barbering, Inclusive Hairdressing Marmalade Bal, Hairdressing, Beauty & Barbering, Inclusive Hairdressing

APPRENTICESHIPS

Ellis Potter, Accountancy Mollie Jones, Accountancy Kathryn Rees, Accountancy Kelly Ellis, Childcare

We are delighted to report that following on from the event, we have two learners registered for the World Skills UK Competitions. Traineeship learner, Alex Beaumont from our Business Services programme, has registered for the Software Solutions for Business competition. He had previously been awarded a bronze for his Inclusive ICT Skills competition entry. Rhiannon Fisher, who is a Hairdressing, Beauty and Barbering apprentice has registered for the Hairdressing competition. Good luck both, we will all be rooting for you!

High Engagement

We are delighted to report that despite 17% of our Apprenticeship learners being on furlough across ACT and the sub network, amazingly 98% of those

learners are still actively engaging with their

learning programme and making progress towards qualifications. This is a fantastic result! Even with the challenges of being at home during lockdown and having to adapt to remote learning, engagement from learners has been really high. Our figures show that we have 98% engagement among apprentices and 80% among Traineeship learners.

Well done to all our delivery staff for continuing to do a fantastic job in supporting our learners and ensuring we deliver excellent services!

A big thanks to our Business Development Team who have been extremely busy ensuring learners are still being signed up online

The implementation of digital sign ups has proven to be successful so far, with very few problems. From May we already have over 94 starts and have also taken on 11 brand new employers, as well as continuing to prospect new clients. In addition to that, ACT have also recently won a tender to deliver a two-year contract for First Aid Training! A brilliant result.

We have also seen a fantastic response to our recent Employer Survey with over 150 clients responding. We will have some excellent feedback to share from the survey very soon so keep your eyes peeled. Claire Mirbelle, Head of Business Development, commented,

“The Business Development Team have been working really hard to keep things moving forward and I’m incredibly proud of how well everyone in the team has managed to keep it all together. They’ve coped with massive changes to how we usually operate and have really stepped up and adapted to the challenges we’ve faced. I’m very appreciative of all their efforts.”

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