New Training Funding For Children And Young People’s Sector

The Children’s Workforce Development Council (CWDC) has announced that following the success of last year’s Occupational Group Funding initiative, it is making a new batch of funding available to support training and development in the children and young people’s sector during 2007-08.

Designed to target groups which find it difficult to access funding from other sources, the Occupational Group funding supports groups within CWDC’s Sector Skills Footprint so that they can build links, skills and develop their role within the Children’s Workforce.

Some of last year’s funded projects included a programme to map the Level 4 Montessori Diploma to the Common Core of Skills and Knowledge for the Children’s Workforce, a music project to help terminally ill young people, and the development of a national training strategy for the Education Welfare Service.

Jane Haywood, Chief Executive of CWDC comments: “Last year’s Occupational Group Funding was a great success, and the funding was used for some very innovative projects. The aim of this funding is to support the development of those working with children and young people in line with the workforce reform agenda.

“Not only will this money help improve the skills of the workforce, many of the projects are helping us explore best practice and giving us ideas about how we can work together to achieve this challenging programme of workforce reform.”

Bids are available to a maximum of £50,000 for a project lasting 12 months. Bids should meet one of a range of criteria including: addressing one or more of the workforce reform processes; demonstrating joint activity across occupational groups or showing links to CWDC developments.