Investing in People

Nicola Thomas Director of Quality and Learning

In 2022 the Polaris Community invested in the growth and enhancement of the learning and development team. We introduced a new refreshed Learning & Development strategy and offer for our leadership team, staff and foster parents.

We wanted to provide a more consistent approach across the whole community and a broader range of relevant training and development opportunities for all of our staff and foster parents. The new offer includes:

• The launch of a revised and consistent mandatory training pathway for foster parents

• A new mandatory training pathway for residential care staff

• A revitalised and more diverse complementary training offer for all

• An accredited Leadership Development programme and a wider complementary offer tailored to leaders

• A new learning and development offer for social work/care and non-social work/care staff

• A refreshed ASYE offer with more opportunities for practice educators to complete the training

• A more consistent trauma-informed behaviour support approach (PRICE) across the community

• A trauma-informed practice workshop for our supervising social workers to enhance the quality of support provided to families

• A renewed focus on our commitment to provide accredited learning opportunities such as degrees and apprenticeships for existing staff.

• A refresh and further development of our Learnative platform

We are committed to investing in people and providing a broad range of development opportunities. I am very proud of the progress we made in 2022 which included devising a wide range of new courses. Delivery and Implementation has already begun and we will be really excited to evaluate the output more fully in 2023 and build on this further to achieve our aim of offering a market-leading learning pathway for all.

4,946 virtual/face to face courses completed in 2022

14 new training courses developed

In order to deliver world class services and support our vision of making a positive and lasting difference for children and young people’s lives Polaris Community is committed to the continuous improvement, of its flexible, highly skilled and competent workforce.

We offer continuous training and development opportunities to the people in our team. We can only achieve what we do because of the passion, talent and knowledge of our people.