With strict lockdown measures enforced by the Scottish Government from the 23rd March, CTC were no longer able to deliver face to face training courses from their training centre in Dumfries. At the same time, there was a significant reduction in demand from their SVQ candidates, who had to focus their efforts on delivering essential health and social care services on the frontline.As a result of increasing pressures on the sector, there is a recognised need to prepare new candidates for a career in social care.

Ian Seymour, General Manager at CTC said: “As a business we have spoken about exploring online training, but a lack of time and resources meant we hadn’t yet pursued it.In an attempt to address the new challenges, we faced as an organisation and by the sector, I spent the early days of working from home submitting an application for grant funding from the Ufi VocTech Trust. Much to my delight, the bid was successful and marked the start of our 12-week journey into the digital world of online learning.”

The VocTech Now funding call was introduced by Ufi to support the use of digital tools in vocational education specifically for learning that was being affected because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

By the end of the 12-week project, CTC will have designed, piloted and launched a new online induction programme suitable for those who are interested in pursuing a career in social care.

Ian said: “We have a very limited time to deliver this project, but all going well we will launch our new online learning courses to the Dumfries and Galloway health and social care sector by the end of July.With courses such as first aid and infection control, we recognise that there may also be a growing demand for our courses in other geographic areas and in other sectors too.We welcome enquiries from anyone who is keen to find out more.”

Ian added: “Our experienced team of trainers, each with their own area of specialism, are responding well to their lockdown challenge to develop and pilot this new e-learning programme in record time.This is only possible due to our existing expertise in delivering these courses in a face-to-face learning environment.We already have the learning materials and knowledge; we just need to adapt the courses for online study and find new ways of supporting our students with online learning. It’s all very exciting and we are extremely grateful to Ufi for funding the project.”

This has not been the only development for CTC during the coronavirus pandemic.While researching online learning, Ian and his team also came across CuppaCare, a simple concept that uses an app on a mobile phone to send high-quality, targeted learning and guidance to staff teams or individuals, just when they need it.

Ian said: “We love the concept of CuppaCare so much, that we have used some of our UFI VocTech funding to offer a limited number of CuppaCare’s short courses (Sips) free of charge to the local care sector.We are the first training provider in Scotland to partner with CuppaCare and we are extremely excited about bringing new learning opportunities to the Social Care sector in Scotland.”

CTC is already in the final stages of testing their new online courses and plan to launch their e-learning programme by late July.Ian said: “While we know online training does not suit everyone and cannot fully replace face to face learning, we hope that our actions to reposition some of our training will be of benefit to the health and social care sector during these very challenging times.We hope to be able to offer face to face courses again soon too, but until it is safe to do so, our new online learning options will help make learning accessible to those most in need at this challenging time.”

Anyone interested in finding out more about CTC’s online induction courses and/or the new CuppaCare micro learning is invited to sign up to the CTC newsletter via www.caretrain.co.uk and follow CTC on social media.