August 2008.

Valley Transitionz Placements.

I thought that you might be interested in the process involved in securing a Valley Transitionz 6 month work placement.

Initial contact is made with an employer usually by male or email. I send out the Valley Transitionz company profile which explains to the employer who we are, who our consumers are and how our programme works.

This is followed up with a telephone call to arrange a meeting with the employer to answer any questions they may have.

Sometimes employers are happy to arrange a meeting, sometimes they are not. If I do manage to meet with an employer, I take an opportunity to look around the work environment so I can answer any questions the consumers may have if we do succeed in getting a work placement there.

Just because an employer agrees to meet with me, doesn’t mean they will give Valley Transitionz a work placement. Sometimes they are worried about health and safety issues; sometimes there are other reasons why they don’t think our programme will fit into their workplace.

Even if they are interested, they don’t always need staff straight away, so they agree to “bear us in mind”. This means I continue to keep contacting them to remind them that Valley Transitionz have people on the programme that are ready and willing to work.

Securing a work placement with an employer can take a lot of phone calls and months and months to organise. Once we have a work placement organized, we then advertise it on the notice board in the activity centre. So, if you are ready for work, please do keep an eye on the notice board.

Written by Charmaine Seccombe. 

Motivational thoughts

We are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.

Minutes from Volunteers’ meeting 29^th July 2008.

Regrettably only a small number of Valley Transitionz volunteers attended this meeting. Valley Transitionz knows that you need to be informed of the decisions made on that day. The volunteers that did attend the meeting have voted on these decisions which will effect all Valley Transitionz volunteers.

 The main point of discussion was “How do volunteers wish to be represented on the Valley Transitionz Governance Committee?” The three options available were

1. One representative for each centre

2. One representative for the total volunteers

3. A group of representatives who appoint one person to be on the committee.

A discussion was entered into and the attending volunteers were in favour of Option 1. This option has been decided on as the feeling is that volunteers at each centrewould know more about what is going on from their own representative.

This option also means that the individual centre representative job could be done in turns iff necessary, as volunteers have virious stages of being well.

The next step will be for a meeting to be held at each centre and for the Valley Transitionz volunteers in that centre to appoint their representative.

This representative will be part of the decision making process for the governance of Valley Transitionz. Discussions will need to be reported back to the volunteers in the centres for feedback.