Well, I trust that you all enjoyed your half term break. It has been great to get back to work this week but I can hardly believe we are into our final half term of the year!

For us at Medtia, we are now in preparation mode for September. We are arranging transition visits for students joining us in September, preparing all the relevant documentation to open the new Future Finders College and Future Finders Employment Support Service and, as I have mentioned before, we are making adaptations to our building to ensure that we are fit for purpose. So, as ever, it is manic!

It is crunch time for our Future Finders students and they are all working extra hard to secure paid work. We have three students on job trials next week – two at a local retail store and one at a garden centre. We wish them all the best of luck and have no doubt that they will prove themselves and gain paid employment.

At Future Finders, we also value the importance of independent volunteering. A great example of this is shown by Faisal, who is going to tell you all about his volunteer post in his ‘A Day In The Life…’

A day in the life of Faisal
Premier Inn (Oldham Central) & Dr. Kershaw’s Charity Shop

I arrive at the Premier Inn after travelling with my job coach and greet everyone with a cheery ‘Good Morning’. My main job is to work with the housekeeping team to clean the rooms and get them ready for when the guests are due to check in.

I do lots of different jobs from stripping beds, vaccing up, replacing the condiments that are used in the room and wiping down all the woodwork. I also help to stock the trolleys ready for the housekeepers to use..

Once I have finished helping to clean the rooms, I go around and collect the dirty laundry, putting it in the cages ready to be taken away. The Premier Inn can be really busy at times and I am really enjoying my time here.

As well as working at Premier Inn for 2 days a week, I have also gained a long term voluntary position working at Dr. Kershaw’s Charity Shop in Oldham.

I work together with the other volunteers in the stock room, going through the donations, preparing them for sale, working together to get the jobs done that we have been set.

One of our main jobs at the shop is to arrange the coat hangers and hang up clothes ready for preparing them to be steamed ready for sale – the steamers makes sure all the clothes are clean and crease free, ready to be put on the shop floor.

This week I have been in charge of checking the stock and hanging it up. Making sure the clothes are suitable for sale is an important part of the job – I check for any faults like rips or missing buttons, then I hang the clothes up and put sizes on them..

Once I have done this, I pass the clothes on to another volunteer who steams the clothes for me. When they are ready, I take the clothes down to the shop floor and hang them on the racks ready for the public to see what the shop has on offer. I really enjoy volunteering at Dr. Kershaw’s!

Now for some work experience updates from Nicola…

Work Experience At The Atrium Café

Over the past couple of weeks, Charlie, Daniel and Alex have been continuing to develop their employability skills by accessing work experience at the Atrium Café.

Some of the skills they have been working on are:

• Kitchen hygiene
• Health and safety
• Communicating with others
• Working with others
• Using their initiative
• Numeracy and literacy

The first thing they have to do each day is put on their aprons and wash their hands before collecting the tea, coffee, sugar, sweeteners and milk and loading the trolley..

They take the trolley to the kitchens located on the different floors of the First Choice Homes offices, where they look and decide what needs replenishing. Charlie, Alex and Daniel can do this task independently and work together, taking it in turns to tick off the replenished stock on the job sheet..

The next job to be done is to set up the trolley to sell snacks to the office staff. Each student has their own individual tasks to complete – Alex cleans the trolley then gets the money and tick list ready while Daniel sets out the chocolates and crisps. He has to remember to put two of the same item onto the trolley. Charlie then sets up the drinks and fruit..

Next they take it in turns to push the trolley around the different floors. Daniel is good at finding the items on the tick list and ticking them off, Charlie likes to give the customers their items and Alex is great at working out costs and giving the customers their change..

When they have finished the trolley run, the lads take turns to put the stock away, input the takings using the iPad and put the money back into the till.

For the rest of this particular morning, they practised the fire evacuation procedure, making their way to the fire assembly points via the different fire exits in the Atrium.

Before the end of each session, the students complete their diaries and target sheets..

Well done, Charlie, Daniel and Alex, keep up the good work!

To end my blog this week, I would like to thank our ICT technicians! As you will have heard, like everyone else we recently had to comply with the new GDPR regulations. For New Bridge this meant that every computer and laptop across the Group had to be re-programmed. This has been an absolutely HUGE piece of work but the team have pulled it off without fuss and in a timely fashion so that we can continue to work uninterrupted. Thank you to you all! Unsung heroes that make our days at work/school so much easier!

I hope that you all have a wonderful weekend, it looks set to be a hot one again!

Daniel
Director of Employment & Co Head of Site at Medtia Square

You can view our previous blog entries here

Click here for this week’s news from Graham