Apprentice Mentor Coordinator Review

At PISW my role varies depending upon which clients I'm seeing. I love working with different ages and backgrounds. I support people to get back in to the community and help promote their independence. This can be done by setting goals and completing reviews which are done with the clients.

I think the biggest skill I've developed is communication. Communication with different types of people and not just through speaking. I am starting to develop some more understanding of mental health and self harm. I think a lot of skills I already had, but they have further been developed through my role.

It was a little tricky to start with, as getting back into learning again and working out how to use the online portal was a small challenge, however I have really enjoyed having a 1:1 teacher but it would be nice to do the learning in person, not just online.

The programme can be a little confusing with the numbers of assignments not in order etc. I also still feel a little confused with the assignments as i have never had to do verbal assessments. So this is something new and strange but I do enjoy doing it this way.

I had a lot of support from my employer to start with, however now I'm struggling to fit in my coursework time as my work have given me a big case load just like the other Mentors. This is tricky to balance as I want to do well in both my job and my apprenticeship.

My training provider has been great with support towards achieving my qualification. Any time I've had questions or needed support, she has taken time out of her day and helped me. I have also spoken to her about difficulties with managing my job and apprenticeship and she has helped with this.

I find that sometimes the qualification is very much directed at someone who would work in the care sector (community care / care home), so sometimes I do feel as though some of the work and research is irrelevant to my role, but I still enjoy learning about it and make sure yo cover it in my learning.

Unfortunately there isn't any extra curricular activities at work. I actually mentioned this a few weeks back, but it wasn't met very well. I thought we could develop our wellbeing side in worm as we are all under a lot of pressure and stress, but unfortunately nothing good came out of the conversation.

Yes

I would recommend this job to a friend for the actual job of seeing clients and being out in the community, however, if my friend was looking for a big company and community, this job doesn't currently have it. So it would be depending on what the friend was looking for.

To be honest and set boundaries to ensure a healthy work-life balance. As we're all busy, it can be difficult to not go over your hours. I would also say that you'd have to be comfortable with lone working as sometimes you don't see your colleagues for a while.