Sue Cox, Wolvehampton Health Tec manager and based in Work based learning in the education department of Royal Wolverhampton Hospital Trust talks about her experiences as a Words for Work volunteer
I became quite a big organising factor of the project, but was quite interested in it myself – I quite like the communication thing so I actually wanted to be a volunteer as well! We had quite a lot of in detail conversations about lots of things really – about the children that would be selected, I mean – the school did that – you know, just to get examples of that. Because I was doing both sides I was more informed if you like, and I did try and pass that on as much as I could to the other volunteers. Most of the volunteers have different roles within the Trust right through from admin to clinical roles. It was intentional to get the widest variety of job roles. We tried to find people that we thought would be interested in communication, we looked at their job roles and the types of communication they engage with on a daily basis, so we tried to get an OT because of the intense communication that goes on but unfortunately their manager wouldn’t release her in the end. We looked at one on one communication, and group communication. Reception communication, specialist information to communicate. We tried to get male/ female. We put quite a lot of thought into the volunteers really. Everybody was able to contribute and join in with us, because I think we gave them time far enough ahead to put it into their diaries. We did plan the days out quite a way ahead really. That’s the only way you can make sure everyone’s available.
I expected to see the pupils develop their communication skills over the 6 sessions we did with them. I hoped that is what we’d see. Not just in the verbal sense – I think because one of the first things they did for us was a presentation, I’d be really interested to see now their presentation because they did quite a detailed analysis of their first presentations and I’d like to think now that their presentation skills and their confidence and their awareness of how they’re presenting themselves in a non-verbal sense as well would have been enhanced. I certainly think it was nice to see their confidence grow as we went through the project in terms of talking with us and engaging with us and asking questions and starting to treat us as equals almost which is quite good really. I think that was the main thing I wanted to get out of it – to think that somehow or other, I have managed to impart to them what it’s like to be in the work world and how they can learn the skills now when they’re just that little bit older – you know, work and jobs and all the rest of it. I kind of kept saying you know, ‘if you were at work now…’ to let them have some insight into the world of work.
I loved the first two sessions – they were great because obviously we were just getting to know each other and then we analysed it and did icebreaker type things, that actually got us quite engaged as a group quite quickly. I really enjoyed that and I really enjoyed pointing out to them – trying to get them to see for themselves. I quite like the analytical stage. My particular group had so many ideas – quiet a few of them were quite unrealistic so it was trying to get them to see what we can achieve in the time allocated. 9 and 10 sessions have been absolutely fabulous. They didn’t even get up for a drink or anything! They were so focussed. They started to say ‘oh, I’m really really enjoying this, it’s not just a game it’s actually an educational tool – I can’t wait until we can play this ourselves.’ I’m sure none of them had heard of ‘norming, forming, storming, performing’ stages. We ought to patent our game!
There were barriers in terms of when the students were available, that’s why we had to plan so far ahead – we had to change things at the last minute and that meant that two of the volunteers couldn’t come to those sessions. There’s always that issue, isn’t there, of everybody being available. Other barriers? No…The school have been amazing, so welcoming – we had a tour of the school before we started…they bought resources, we bought resources, we naturally shared the load – no one side seems to have had the brunt of that. I think the fact we linked all the projects to health was a bit quirky.
Pupils definitely seem to have gained confidence in their oral communication. They have definitely gained an awareness of their body language when listening to presentations etc – we’ve talked about that quite a lot. Then when they were asked in the last session, they gave very quick-fire answers so they definitely understand that words are quite a small part of communication – that realisation has sort of hit them now.
Their awareness is there now…as long as they remember it…I’m sure they will. Every time we’ve met you know I’ve said ‘we need to recap’ and we look at the interests/ expertise of each member of the team to decide who is going to do what and they’ve said ‘oooh that’s a good idea’. Some of them were quite quiet to start with so I’m sure the confidence is there for them to continue using their skills, yeah.
In the world of health, communication is key to looking after patients and colleagues. It’s because you have to communicate at every single level. You have to communicate with babies, right through the age ranges, right through, I don’t like the word intellect, but right through all the intellects – abilities of people, people who don’t have English as their first language – so there’s so many different ways that you have to communicate. You have to be aware of your non-verbal communication with people who are poor of hearing, because I know how important it is in my job, I’ve always thought it is an important skill to learn and the earlier you can grasp the basics of it the better really. At the end of the day these guys are going to be looking for jobs in a couple of years or they may even be writing their applications for uni or whatever it is – they’ve got to be able to communicate what they’ve done to people that are interviewing them or whatever. So I think that communication is such an important skill and having seen some student nurses or work experience students come out into health, you realise how quiet they can be – they’re not confident to ask questions, and they don’t really want to engage with you and they might be with you for a week but it’s not until the very end that they’ll start to ask questions so I think the Words for Work group now realise that it’s ok to ask questions, and they’ll know how to form the questions I think. They’ll know how to present themselves as well. It’s going to help them.
Nick Rudge, Risk & Safety Management team at Wolves PCT – based at a centre for learning disabilities called Pond Lane talks about his experiences of Words for Work
"I deliver health & safety and fire training and have been involved with Health Tec who are the organising body for Wolverhampton & City PCT. Through delivering the training there I’ve been involved with Liz and Sue who run the Health Tec. They were looking for volunteers and very kindly asked me to be involved. I was hoping, from a purely selfish point of view, increase my exposure to training and working with young children – it’s a huge area we’re trying to develop as a Trust from a health and safety perspective so people are trained to go into the workplace and are more aware of the health and safety regulations. Being able to increase my knowledge of working with young people, and pick up some more skills in that area is what I was hoping to achieve. The best thing was the end product we’ve created – we’ve made a video identifying the journey that a drug addict could be involved in. Doing the video was great and making it was really enjoyable but sitting down with the young people in our group and watching it back on the screen and seeing it all come together was brilliant. They were very proud and impressed with what they produced.
The young people I worked with were very vocal, very interactive and wanted to sort of get on and complete the project. Having spoken to other volunteers, they perhaps found it quite difficult to break down some of the adult/ kid boundaries. We were able to complete our project in the time allocated – with seconds to spare to be honest. One of the lads was definitely more vocal than the other previously, but in the last session today they were equally as vocal – I think maybe they have adapted to working in a group or the chap who was a little quieter initially has actually opened up and got involved in what we were doing. Producing the video was definitely something they were both very interested in and I think therefore it met their needs in that respect. It was all about working as a team and communicating – identifying roles, identifying people’s skills and putting those to best use. I think they did develop and come into their own in the last session so hopefully they’ll just move forward from here.
If you can’t speak and talk effectively and get your point across it can become very frustrating. Equally, you can’t be doing all the talking all the time – you have to listen, take on other people’s opinions, I think as proven through this project – when people listen to others and come together and have a joint/ combined work ethic they can achieve a lot more than just going off on their own. During the icebreaker today, we had identified people’s roles and that didn’t come from the volunteers – it came from the children who were part of the team. As a pilot project if it gets rolled out in the future it would be fantastic and we’d love to be part of it again."
