What is outsourced CPD and why does it matter?

Fostering a culture of continued learning is truly at the heart of what we do at Participation People. Since our CEO Antonia founded the business over a decade ago, curiosity, a growth mindset and a relentless drive to understand what makes young people tick, has been embedded in our culture. 

Partly, we can attribute this to the nature of working with young people. As they get older and circumstances change, what young people want and need is always evolving, so no one who considers themselves an expert can remain one without dedicating themselves to ongoing personal development.  Upskilling is a journey, not a destination. 

Outsourced Continued Professional Development is a service we offer to expand your knowledge, understanding and experience of engaging young people with your organisation. It’s conducted on a one-to-one mentoring basis, and is completely bespoke to the needs of the individual, making it suitable for both the very experienced and those who are new to the sector.

The brief

We worked with Cruse Bereavement Support, a charity that helps people experiencing grief and bereavement via a helpline, information and campaigning. Whilst the charity is not aimed solely at young people, the organisation recognised that young people might need different resources to adults when going through painful times, and wanted to do more to improve the service that they were able to offer them.

Jennie Buckland – National Strategic Lead, for Children and Young People was new in the role, and sought us out to mentor her as she tackled this challenge head on, tailoring the support Cruse Bereavement provides with young people in mind. 

Through focus groups, it was made clear that young people were not getting the support they needed or engaging with the service as much as they could. Jennie identified that the key stepchange needed was to evolve the way the organisation was communicating with young people to encourage them to participate with the service, and making sure youth voices could be heard in language used throughout.

Our solution – Outsourced CPD

Our Outsourced CPD for Cruse Bereavement followed two key stages. 

• A deep dive six hour youth voice training session, led by a Participation People training manager to assess the key requirements for youth engagement and how these might be tackled moving forward, developed into a roadmap for success 
• Ongoing mentoring and coaching for six months with regular review sessions, addressing challenges in real time, adapting and updating the roadmap and going through specific actions to create a programme for success

After each session, Jennie would have revised goals and tasks to complete to ensure that the activity stayed on track and evolved at pace. 

By the end of the six months, we had collaboratively completed a comprehensive toolkit to roll out across the charity, offering tips and advice on communicating with young people for anyone to use. 

This outsourced CPD was part of a bigger picture strategy, which saw us develop a wider comms programme consulting young people on the ways they were using the service, digging into the details of how it could work harder for them. Our work culminated in the development of a flyer, which could be passed on to potential service users and was designed by young people themselves, making sure messaging was really attuned to the right audience. 

Impact

By working hand-in-hand with Jennie we were able to make a real difference to the service Cruse Bereavement was offering to young people. Jennie proved to be a driven and passionate delegate and so our collaborative work took shape quickly over the engagement period.

Our project concluded with further focus groups, and we were delighted to find that young users of the service did feel improvements had been made. 

Our toolkit remains an ongoing resource for the use of the Cruse Bereavement team,  to consult on an ongoing basis, ensuring that youth voice is throughout everything they do.

Testimonial

“The training with Participation People has helped me to focus on where we need to go as an organisation and now I have the evidence to support it too. 

The involvement of young people is super. It’s so motivational to see what they’ve achieved personally and how much value is to be gained for everyone by engaging young people in our work.” 

 

Jennie Buckland, Cruse Bereavement National Strategic Lead CYP

Conclusion

If you have ambitious plans to level up the way your organisation engages with young people from ground zero, we can offer a full mentoring service to equip you with the skills you need. 

Likewise, if you’re experienced with working with young people and just need a hand-hold to make minor improvements, our outsourced CPD service can be a helpful critical friend to provide support and keep you accountable to your goals. 

Interested to know how outsourced CPD could benefit your business strategy? Reach out to us today!