Thirty unemployed people in North Lanarkshire graduated the KDS academy today at Motherwell FC Fir Park. The four week training programme has equipped them with the necessary skills to become support workers with leading care at home provider Independent Living Services Scotland Ltd. These skills included moving and assisting skills, first aid, food hygiene, fire safety and food handling.
Scottish training firm KDS Training from Paisley is working in partnership with ILS to provide training and induction for new starts with the firm. Independent Living Services Scotland (ILS) is already employing 1200 care workers across the country, working in nearly every Scottish local authority area. The firm has grown steadily since it was founded 14 years ago in Clackmannanshire. It has an ongoing recruitment drive for new support workers, and is currently looking to fill a further 20 new jobs in the Motherwell area to help deliver a new contract with North Lanarkshire Council to provide care at home in the Motherwell and Wishaw areas.
Says Edmund Mackay, regional manger for ILS, in the west of Scotland, “We were delighted to win the new contract to provide care at home services in Motherwell and Wishaw and are actively recruiting new members to our teams. Our training and development programme for new and existing staff with KDS Training has been a big success. We train and develop all staff, so if you have never worked in care, but are seeking a new post with high job satisfaction, this might be for you. Our care-at-home teams are of all ages – from 18 – 72! And those who have transferred into the care sector from other sectors in business and industry say they have never enjoyed a job as much as this one.”
KDS Paisley runs four week “academies” for job seekers and the Department of Work and Pensions. The KDS Academies are the brainchild of Stevie Kidd, who set up the firm in 2004, initially as a distribution business. Steven Hunter, training manager at KDS says “People of working age who have been in long term unemployment find the transition from unemployment to getting in to work difficult due to low levels of self belief, lack of confidence and little motivation. Our academies aim to provide each individual with the necessary skills and tools to deal with and move beyond most of these barriers.” KDS use neuro-linguistic programming techniques to promote “soft skills” such as confidence and inter personal skills in the academies.
ILS is the biggest provider of domiciliary care in Scotland. It was awarded Best Overall Provider 2009 by the overarching body Scottish Care at Home. Headquartered in Alva, ILS operates from a network of nine regional offices across Scotland. These are located in Auchterarder, Bathgate, Banff, Ellon, Galashiels, Inverness, Motherwell and Prestwick. The company provides flexible, responsive and accountable care at home services to enable individuals to live within the community and works in partnership with 20 local authorities to provide specialist services in three main areas - adults with a disability, older peoples’ services and support for children and families. For more information visit www.ilsscotland.com