Apprenticeship Overview Information

This information is designed to help both managers and staff to better understand apprenticeships and the benefits apprenticeship programmes can offer for both personal career planning and service delivery improvement. An apprenticeship can help you to progress through your chosen career pathway. Managers can use apprenticeships to upskill their staff and develop their workforce in a way that meets service needs. Apprenticeships are available from level 2 to level 7 and cover all career pathways and professional routes. To undertake an apprenticeship you need to be in a relevant job role, most of your learning is on the job, to give an example someone working in an administration role wouldn’t be able to undertake a healthcare support worker apprenticeship as they wouldn’t be undertaking the tasks required to meet the learning objectives of the course. However there are some apprenticeships which are more generic and do fit a range of job roles, for example management apprenticeships or Customer Service could be done by both the healthcare worker and the administrator. Apprenticeships in Mersey Care are funded by the Apprenticeship Levy, so there is no financial cost to the individual apprentice or to the manager. There is a commitment to time to learn and apprentices will need to be given time in their working hours to undertake ‘off the job learning’. This equates to – 20% of the apprentices working time. This doesn’t mean the apprentice is away from their usual job for 20% of the time but managers do need to work with the apprenticeship training provider to identify suitable ‘off the job’ learning activities. For apprenticeships at level 4 or above you will normally be expected to have GCSE C grade or grade 4/5 or an equivalent level 2 e.g., Functional Skills Maths and English. You must be able to provide evidence of achievement. If you no longer have your certificates or need to achieve level 2 contact the apprenticeship team for support and advice. If you know which apprenticeship you want to enrol on your first step is to complete a levy funding application form: This will be presented to the Workforce Development Education and Training Governance Group for approval. This group meets monthly. Managers may want to put more than one person forward for an apprenticeship programme, in this case please complete the manager referral form.