As the year draws to a close, it’s the perfect time to celebrate the incredible accomplishments across our team and projects. Here’s a look at some of the highlights and milestones from 2024.
Firstly our programmes, Positive Moves and Multiply gather pace and are helping more and more people, with many moving onto employment and further education/training. Our Positive Moves programme has supported over 500 people in Clacks. Huge thanks to Louise and Ruth, our key workers, who have worked tirelessly with over 300 clients to help them take positive steps towards employment, including 130 clients who have achieved one or more qualifications.
Our Multiply programme is providing support on literacy and numeracy and has supported 90 people through one to one tutor sessions with our fantastic Tutors Jacqueline and Babs. Even more clients have been supported through workshops and courses with 14 achieving formal qualifications. Multiply is becoming popular with young people who are just leaving school looking for qualifications and we hope to help many of these young people over the next few months.
This year we ran an innovative series of courses designed to provide tasters into hands on trades, all of which proved to be extremely popular! Our Jack of all Trades courses, which provided a practical introduction to carpentry, plastering and electrical, were especially well received. As was our Introduction to Barbering course, with one participant going on to secured part-time employment cutting hair in care homes for the elderly – a fantastic achievement! Our Childcare work taster is providing direct work experience for 10 people. Grant organises CERT’s courses and activities, so a huge thank you to him for a great 2024 programme.
We also worked with residents in Clacks this year, through our Let us Decide project, funded by the People’s Postcode Trust. Designed to reach out to a range of residents in Clackmannanshire to hear what support they wanted to help them address issues that they face and key barriers that they want to overcome, the work was brilliant at helping us to learn what our clients want rather than what we think they would benefit from. We worked with 7 groups – read our report HERE.
2024 also saw the completion of our Childcare Strategic Business Case. It was a new-to-CERT mammoth task, painstakingly undertaken by our team member Claire, involving lots of research and has become a useful resource around the childcare landscape across Clacks. Our first achievements are helping establish after school care in Menstrie and we expect the new year to see the opening of a service in Tillicoultry. Claire provides ongoing support to our crucial childminders. Claire also completed a project to map the mental health services available to Clacks residents, producing a signposting guide as a result. Watch this space for more projects to support mental health in the new year!
And this year CERT become an approved SQA centre, enabling us to offer SQA qualifications to our clients. Not only this, we passed our first review with flying colours, a testament to the hard work and attention to detail from the team, in particular Babs and Jaqueline – thank you! So far this year we have had 14 clients achieve SVQ qualifications with us, supporting them on their journey towards employability.
In 2024 we welcomed some new staff to CERT. Briony joined us to make sure our admin delivers an excellent experience for all our clients and has been doing a terrific job of keeping everything - and everyone! - on track. She works alongside an existing member of the team, Stephen, who works tirelessly on many of the back-end processes that make our activities happen – Stephen is a powerhouse and plays a hugely valuable role at CERT. Towards the end of the summer, Cate joined as Interim Chief Officer to work alongside Jean, our Chair. And on Halloween(!) we had Natalia join us as a Trainee Keyworker and Fiona join us on keyworking secondment from our partners Apex. It’s been a delight to build the team to deliver to our clients.
And finally, let’s hear from some of the people in Clacks CERT has supported this year:
“I have received my SVQ communication level 4 certificate today. I want to Thank you for your help and effort. I really appreciate it”
"I attended the Making a Difference in your Community course...it was very informative, the guest speakers were so passionate about the roles they have played in helping young people and adults, they have inspired me even more and confirmed that I have definitely found the right path for me"
“I can’t tell you how much the workshops have helped my mental health. Its good to know that I am not the only one who feels the way I do”
Everyone at CERT wishes you a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year when it comes...and here’s hoping 2025 is a great year for all those in Clacks who we support.