Training is at the heart of the service FirstStop offers older people – face to face, over the phone and on the web. In later life, looking after yourself, your home, your money and your rights are fundamental to a good life. To make sure that people receive a quality service we have invested in different ways of training and raising awareness for different audiences. These include:
• Older people
• Older people's community groups and activists
• Advice workers
• Professionals in housing, health and social care
We have also developed courses in:
• Housing options for older people
• Establishing a housing options service for older people
• Care options for older people – help to remain at home
• Considering residential care for older people
• Housing and Support for older people with dementia
• Money matters for older people
• Downsizing options
• Rights and entitlements – the law, standards and how to access entitlements
• Pre-retirement: A fresh approach to planning for your retirement
Whether you are looking for a suitable course for yourself, a colleague, a new member of staff or a whole team we can offer a range of open and in-house courses to suit. Open courses are held at our London venue and are open to individuals to book places. Course dates are fixed. In-house courses are delivered to your team on your premises on a mutually agreeable date.
With our wealth of experience in offering advice and information for older people, their families and carers about housing and care options in later life we are ideally placed to provide specialist training courses. Funded by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), we have a mission to build the capacity of professionals and volunteers who work with older people to provide information about the full range of options open to them.
We have developed these courses to cover the areas that we know from experience regularly feature when advising older people. Our trainers are fully qualified advisors and have extensive experience in delivering training to professionals and volunteers.
Over the past six months we have invested heavily in training caseworkers, managers and advisers working for our partners to ensure a consistent, quality service across England. This is important because we want to build an integrated national and local service with a clear focus on discussing options with older people, rather than directing them along a specific track, whether that is staying put or moving on.
Our national partner, Care & Repair England, has specialised in work with older people and offers courses and workshops about later-life housing, designed to raise the awareness of older people about their options, as well as courses to enable members of older people's groups to offer peer-to-peer information. Care & Repair England has also developed three self help training packages, available on the FirstStop website, which have been viewed more than 100 times over the last year.
Our track record is growing. Over the past two years, face to face housing options training and workshops have been delivered to 2,424 older people, volunteers, community activists, councillors and professionals. Following the provision of training/workshop packages for local partners, there is evidence that the cascade of local training has reached a further 9,000 people. In addition, 1,026 people have been involved in peer support and other related activities which will be covered in a further piece in this partner zone.
For more information on general training, contact Shirley Blight, FirstStop training manager on shirley.blight@firststopadvice.org.uk or on training for older people's groups, contact Care & Repair England on info@careandrepair-england.org.uk.
