Helping young people is my main motivation
Charity worker swapped careers and encourages others to follow her
A charity which supports children and young people is looking to recruit more carers with real life experience.
Kibble runs an in-house learning and development team and recruits people with life experience and provides full training and mentoring to become fully qualified Child and Youth Care Workers.
One of the new mentors is Lola Devine, 30, who left the hospitality sector in 2017 to begin a career in care with Kibble.
Since joining the charity, Lola has worked her way through the training programme, successfully achieving her HNC and Professional Practice Award in Mentoring SCQF level 7 qualification, and is now a fulltime child and youth care worker with Kibble.
Lola said: “I moved into child and youth care from hospitality with little experience, but thankfully that didn’t matter due to the extensive and thorough training Kibble were able to provide me with.
“Kibble recruit people with all different experience, as long they have a drive to help young people.
“I have been with Kibble ever since, and this new opportunity to become a mentor and pass on what I’ve learned during my time here to my fellow colleagues is really fulfilling, while helping me progress my own career.
“It’s reassuring to know Kibble focuses on their staff’s learning and development.
“The hope is that by generating the most highly trained staff in the sector, we will be capable of providing young people with the support that they need.”
As well as full training and mentoring, an HNC in Social Care qualification and a living wage, staff-in-training candidates are guaranteed an interview for a child and youth care role at Kibble upon completion.
Jim Gillespie, CEO at Kibble, added: “We invest in employees gaining further qualifications and training, have an in-house Learning and Development team and offer our staff-in-training course to those who want to begin a rewarding career in care.
“These decisions have all been anchored in what’s best for the young people, and how we can improve their life experience, not just at Kibble but across the sector as a whole.
“I would encourage people with life experience to apply.
“The essential requirement is the aspiration to support young people and provide them with a better chance at life – as long as you have that we will work with you to make sure you have the skills and experience to become the best carer possible.”
Applications for the staff-intraining programme are open, for more details go to www.kibble. org/work-with-us/kibbles-staffin-training-course/