Blog
Prioritising Staff Development in 2022!
Mon, 9th Jan 2023This year has been a great year for our young people, but it has also been a terrific year for our growing team.
In 2022 we have been proud to be able to commit time and funding towards our staff and their development. For the whole team we are delighted to have implemented a comprehensive package of training courses for all staff which covers a wide range of material, from Health and Safety, Safeguarding Young People, Effective Teamwork and much more. Our entire Dumfries and Stranraer team has completed a Mental Health First Aid course with Dumfries and Galloway college, while Allison and Liz completed their ASDAN Assessor training.
We continued to develop our team together as a whole with two full staff development days, during which we were joined by members of the board. These were great opportunities for our teams to come together and share their working practices with one another, their ideas, and their successes.
In January we were delighted to welcome Reece McCall, a previous young person, to Team Stranraer as our Social Media Assistant and Assistant support worker through the Government’s Kickstart scheme. Since finishing his Kickstart, Reece has continued working with us and has taken part in a Photography course with Castle Douglas I.T center and now runs BLP Stranraer’s own Facebook page.
The Communications team kept on growing in June when we welcomed our second Galloway Glens Social Media Intern, Thomas. In August completed a photography course with Allan Smith and all his online courses training courses. We are excited to have been able to extend Thomas’ internship with us for a further 6 months and look forward to offering him further training in 2023. Thomas has really developed his skills since starting with us and took over all BLP’s social media while our Communications officer took an extended leave of absence to go traveling.
Speaking of our Communications Officer, Calypso has completed her own training this year as she received her Modern Apprenticeship qualification in Youth Work and took part in the I.T centers Photography course to improve her skills, before taking her 3-month break to travel around South America where she made great use of her improved photography.
In September we welcomed Ribh to our growing Head Office Team as our Research and Management Assistant. Ribh has been a great addition to the team and thanks to funding from Foundation Scotland has completed a 5-day PRINCE 2 Project Management Course. Ribh passed Foundation and Practitioner exams, meaning she is now qualified as a Project Manager, and well-equipped to carry out feasibility and planning work needed to develop new Project strands within the BLP.
We are so proud of our team for everything they have achieved this year, alongside the young people and individually, and can’t wait to see what the New Year brings.
