SMT Training

1
SMT Training Development Centre

• Developing Skills for
• Safer Communities
• Susan Cousins
• Executive Director
• Safer Merthyr Tydfil
• sc_at_smt.org.uk

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Safer Merthyr Tydfil

• Charitable company
• Established 1994
• Aim to improve quality of life in Merthyr Tydfil
  by reducing crime and the fear of crime

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4 Key Programmes of Work

• Homesafe Burglary Reduction Scheme
• Take 2 Youth Mentoring
• Domestic Abuse Resource Team
• Community Safety Wardens

4
Sharing Good Practice

• 12 years experience in delivering diverse
  community safety initiatives
• Charitable objective to share good practice
  within the wider field of Community Safety
• With both voluntary and statutory sectors

5
Training Need Identified

• Demand for more formal training and development
  amongst Community Safety Practitioners
• 2003 invited by NWU (ODPM) to pilot NVQ2 in
  Warden Occupations in Wales
• Became approved City Guilds Assessment Centre

6
Meeting Local Need

• Qualifications extended to include
• - Community Safety NVQ levels 3 4
• - Working with Offending Behaviour NVQ
• levels 3 4
• - Working with Victims Survivors
• Witnesses NVQ levels 3 4
• - A1 and V1 Awards

7
Meeting National Need

• March 2005 merged with Wales Community Justice
  Assessment Centre
• Became SMT Training Development Centre
• The only NVQ Assessment Centre for Community
  Justice sector in Wales

8
Rising to the Challenge

• Having a national remit as opposed to a local one
• Promoting the Centre and the value of NVQs
• Partnership with Skills for Justice
• ELWa-funded project to promote NVQs within the
  Voluntary Sector

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Working with the Statutory Sector

• Probation Service TPO programme
• Professional development programme for Community
  Safety Officers
• Supported by Crime Reduction Director for Wales
• Pilot NVQ4 programme funded by the Home Office

10
Delivering NVQs

• SMT provides Peripatetic Assessors
• Not the norm usually work-based Assessors
• But internal assessment isnt always possible
• SMT fills the gap and makes NVQs accessible to
  all

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Partnership with Skills for Justice

• Ensures links with national strategy and policy
  for training development within the sector
• Executive Director of SMT sits on SfJ Wales
  Country Group
• Provides opportunities to influence the
  development of new professional qualifications
  within the sector

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The Future for NVQs

• A growing awareness within Community Safety field
  in Wales of the need for a qualified,
  professional and motivated work-force
• NVQs being seen as an ideal way to gain
  nationally recognised qualifications in a
  work-based environment