Serena

TESTING the waters in her chosen field of interest not only helped former VETiS student Brianna Starick decide on a future career path, but also resulted in full time employment.
Opting to complete VCAL over VCE because she “had no idea” what career path she wanted to take post-school, Brianna, 19 went on to start a VET course which then merged into the current
VETiS course.

Completing the Certificate 2 in Community Services on a Wednesday, over the course of 2 years, Brianna was able to gain a better understanding of which field she preferred; children’s services or disability services.

“I love kids. I always knew I wanted to work with them and was leaning towards the disability sector,” Brianna said. “However, even though my brother has a disability, I thought I might struggle
working with severely disabled children, so it was good to have the opportunity to try both fields and see whether I preferred children’s or disability services,” she said.

Describing the program as “well set out” and “easy to understand”, Brianna said her tutor, Dianne, was “awesome”.  “Dianne was so easy to talk to and gave us the chance to interact with a lot of
people from varied fields,” she said. “I really enjoyed the entire course and got a much better understanding of psychology, in particular, and some other areas.”

Now in her second year as a Teacher’s Aide at Horsham Primary School, Brianna, who works with students from Prep-Grade Six with a low IQ or behavioural concerns, said the course helped a lot in her role. “While I was completing VET I was able to do some work placement at the school, working with the Prep students for a year,” she said. “That also gave me a bit of an advantage when it came to applying for my job.”

“The course was a lot of hard work, but it has been great to see it pay off and have the training click into place.” Previously undertaking a professional development day on intervention programs at Horsham Special School, Brianna was so inspired by the training that she implemented a similar program at her school. “I was very proud to be able to introduce, and run, our Balls and Ladders program which assists students with their hand, eye and feet coordination,” she said.

Born and raised in Horsham, Brianna was excited to learn that she was being offered a 7 year contract at the school recently, and said she hopes to go on and complete a teaching degree in the future.

 

Opting to

No strangers to volunteering, having given their time to various roles throughout the course of many decades, the couple spent 22 years.

MOVING to Horsham “temporarily” in 2009, John and Sandra Bamkin thought they’d volunteer “while we’re here”; nine years on the couple could have never imagined the amazing impact their friendly visiting would have or the ongoing friendships they would develop.

Travelling Australia on their bus and gaining amazing life experiences, before moving to Horsham when John was given the chance to study IT.

Joining the former Wimmera HUB, Sandra was involved in taking clients shopping while John volunteered as a driver, with their roles later evolving to friendly visiting; something the couple’s impressive background as counselors no doubt assisted with.

And, aged a spritely 73 and 76 respectively, Sandra and John simply refuse to utter the “R” word…retirement: “We have a laugh when people say they’re retired as we refuse to use that word; we have so much still to offer”.

“Volunteering as friendly visitors is a lot of fun, and we have developed strong rapport and friendships with the people we visit,” Sandra said. Plus, we get a lot out of knowing we can still be of use to the community like keeping and get to meet lots of nice people and have fun,” John said.

If their counselling background wasn’t impressive enough, the couple also trained in IT, management, natural therapies, massage and training, and, during their travels, spent time living and working with Aboriginal communities.

Visiting a client who was shy, closed off and didn’t engage with them to the point refused to let them enter his home, the couple worked on his engagement skills and are proud to now consider the client a friend who has most definitely come out of his shell since they met.

“We’ve developed such a good friendship with this client, who loves going for coffee and drives, and even asked whether he could spend his birthday with us,” Sandra said. “We used to run meditation classes and brought him along. This helped him get out of the house and meet new people. Prior to our friendly visiting there is no way he would have ever done that,” she said.

Preparing to host two workshops at the Centre for Participation on June 25, INTERNATIONAL volunteering expert Rob Jackson, who will make his third visit to Horsham in June, believes now is an important time for the Australian volunteering movement.

UK basedMr Jackson, whose background includes leading and managing volunteers and volunteering programs for over 20 years, will discuss customer service and volunteering, and myths of volunteer management.

“I’m excited to be returning to Horsham for my third visit in a little over two years,”Mr Jackson said.

“I’ve had the pleasure of working with the Centre for Participation and many other Wimmera organisations in my previous training sessions and I always receive a warm welcome; the hospitality, friendliness and commitment of volunteer managers in the region is exceptional and so welcome when you are on the other side of the world,” he said. The customer service and volunteering workshop will help participants understand the importance of good customer service in volunteer programs, and what they can do to improve the service they provide.

Expectations

“Whether we like it or not, our societies are increasingly consumer-driven and we all now have higher expectations of our interactions with business and service providers than we did a decade ago,” Mr Jackson said. “We expect fast responses to questions, speedy delivery of purchases and a high standard of professionalism in our dealing with others. Volunteering is not immune to this,” he said.

“As the old cliche goes ‘you only have one chance to make a good impression’, so Volunteer Involving Organisations and Volunteer Managers have to be highly attuned to delivering great customer service to existing and potential volunteers.” “I hope people will pick up some hints and tips about how to deliver great customer service in their work with volunteers and leave the workshop with some actionable steps to further improve their work.”

Myths

During the Myths of Volunteer Management workshop,Mr Jackson will explore some of the common myths about volunteers and volunteering, like “volunteers can’t handle confidential information”, “volunteers take people’s jobs”,  and “volunteers are less effective than paid staff”, in a bid to assist attendees in sharpening their arguments and to stand up for their work.

Book your place now, seats limited 

Venue: Centre for Participation
Date: Monday 25 June 2018
Cost: $40 pp for one workshop or $65 pp for both workshops

 

Are you looking for a change in direction in your life?

Join like-minded women in a positive, safe and nurturing learning environment to gain confidence in setting life goals and ambitions, enhance interpersonal skills, develop effective communication and develop effective communication and develop a positive self-image while identifying personal strengths.

The course runs from February 2 to June 29 from 9.30am to 3.00pm.

For more information please contact Centre for Participation on 03 5382 5607

 

A major new research project has been launched in a bid to measure the value of volunteers for people with disabilities.

Also looking at identifying models of best practice that will pave the way for volunteer services in the future, the research is being undertaken by Interchange Incorporated, in partnership with the University of Melbourne and the Department of Health and Human Services.

The first of its kind in Australia, the project aims to provide an evidence base to inform policy and practice nationally and comes amid a period of uncertainty around funding to support volunteerism under the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Interchange Incorporated executive officer Kerry Uren said the aim of the six-month research project is to gather evidence about the benefits of volunteering in the disability sector in Victoria.

“The NDIS is saying that they are supportive of social capital retention but they are uncertain about how the funding looks or where it fits and have been non-committal about how they are going about doing that,” Ms Uren said.

The idea is to provide an evidence base so that we can provide some information about it and help them decide,  she said.

Prior to the NDIS, community service organisations for people with disabilities received and distributed funding for services on a group basis, known as block funding.

And volunteer programs were typically funded through these block grants, however, under the NDIS, payment for securing volunteer services are not included in the individualised funding model.

It is unclear how the Information, Linkages and Capacity Building funding component will support volunteer services for persons with disabilities, with Ms Uren commenting that the ongoing uncertainty around funding was having a significant impact on the sector.

“The uncertainty has put a lot of pressure on the ability of service providers to transition to the NDIS and to strategically plan for moving forward with their volunteer program, which has been a bit of a challenge,” she said.

Researchers believe part of the problem is that volunteering is “underestimated and undervalued”.

Ms Uren said she believed volunteering had been undervalued as there was no clarification about the size of volunteering: “So there has actually been no research undertaken that can demonstrate how many people volunteer, how many hours are provided or how many people with disability are supported or benefit from community inclusion because of volunteers.”

“That’s what we’re hoping this research will help us to provide,” she said.

And researchers are now calling on volunteer supported services, volunteers and people in receipt of volunteer supports to take part in the project to provide a better understanding of the current profile of volunteerism in Victoria.

Services that have recently made the decision to discontinue using volunteers because of the uncertainty around funding are also encouraged to take part.
Stage one of the project will see participants complete a five-minute online survey including questions like whether the organisation offers any volunteer supported services/the number of programs offered.

For more information or to take part in the research project register here.