work coach (Department for work and pensions) Review

Work Coach for the DWP, i work in Bootle Job centre interviewing claimants who are claiming universal credit. It is my job to help claimants get into work and support them on this journey to a job, offering any provision and skill courses they may need in order to have the best chance in getting and keeping a job. This involves following a structured diary of regulr and new claimants.

I am currently still in training, therefore i have not started my job properly yet, however druing training i have learned and developed many new and exisiting skills inlcuidng, communication, organisation, time-keeping. I have learnt lots of technical things that are associated with my job role including processes that i must follow aswell as completing 12 days of technical system training which has been hard but useful.

It is hard for me to answer this as I have only been in my role 2 months and I am still in training. But so far so good!

I have been made to feel really welcome and valued by every memeber of my team in my jobcentre. I keep on receiving lots of information associated with my apprenticeship and what is planned for the future.

The training programme is vary structured and seems well planned out. It is a long programme which is really helping me prepare for my role. My spprenticeship programme seems well organised due to the fact that i am having to travel to manchester for 2 whole days, every 7 weeks, i have already been given all of these dates so that i am able to plan ahead and block out my diary.

I have only met with my skills coach once and he was really nice however i did not recieve as much information as i would have liked. I also attended an induction day with QA in Birmingham which to be honest was really quite pointless. The information that we got ont hat day was completley irrelevant to our apprenticeship and therefore it did not help us at all, infact it confused us even more. It just seemed like a waste of a day having to travel 2 hours for a day that was completely pointless.

My line manager is really lovely and is extremely helpful and if i have any problems, he gets them sorted right away. He has a really positive attitutde and he wants to help me in every way to ensure that i complete my apprenticeship in the most efficient way and therfore i will be able to progress and succeed in the future.

My salary is so good for an apprenticeship and it is actually due to increase in July which i am obviously really happy with. However i have to travel 50miles round trip everyday to get to my office which is slightly annoying as most of the people i work with do not have to travel as far as me. the use of petrol & tolls every day takes up alot of my salary.

I do not understand this question

No

The application process was awful. The fact that there was no communication what so ever from August 2016-January 2017 was slightly worrying and very dissappointing. The whole process seemed very unorganised and really un-professional.

The application and interview process is pretty tough and some people may find it quite intense. The lack of communication from the CS is very poor, and the fact it took me 6 months to actually start my apprenticeship may be helpful to some people so that they are not waiting around and thinking that they have not been successful.