Your Trust Charity has been awarded more than £90,000 for a scheme which will give work placement opportunities to youths across the community.
Your Trust Charity, run by the Trust, has been given the grant by NHS Charities Together to run the Youth Volunteering Champions (YVC) project. It will benefit 16 to 18 year-olds looking for experience in the healthcare sector.
It will run alongside SCORE (Supporting Career Opportunities, Recruitment and Employment), a similar initiative which offers 16 to 30 year-olds work placements, giving them confidence and experience in a healthcare setting as well as help in building up other skills ensuring they are “job ready” when they finish the programme.
Wari Gharib (pictured), aged 19, recently joined SCORE and has ambitions to become a neurosurgeon. He has applied to study medicine at university and hopes that the experience he gains in clinical settings at the Trust which runs Sandwell, City and Rowley Regis Hospitals, will lead to better opportunities in the future.
He said: “My passion is in neurosurgery and when I found out about SCORE I was keen to build on my experience within clinical settings. School obviously prepares you academically but what this initiative does is give you the opportunity to work within healthcare settings and see first-hand what it is like.
“I think it’s a really important programme and opens up so much to those who are on it.”
Johnny Shah, Head of Your Trust Charity, welcomed the funding. He said: “This project will really help to give young people in our community an opportunity to experience working within the healthcare sector. It gives them short-term experience, but it also ties in nicely with our SCORE initiative.
“Both will offer a variety of roles within customer services, our hospitality services, and portering. They will also provide opportunities in charity funded projects, such sports leadership and our ‘art in hospital’ programme. They will either be offered as internships or as work experience over a period of time.”
SCORE was officially launched mid-February and has a number of candidates already volunteering. It is funded by The Prince’s Trust and aims to boost the confidence of those who have been left out of work due to the COVID-19 pandemic and for them to find skilled meaningful jobs, particularly roles at our Trust but also with associated teams and other NHS partners across the region.
It offers mandatory training in English and Maths, accredited modules built around health and social care, wellbeing and sports leadership, as well as work placements and CV writing. Those involved will have opportunities to take part in team building activities and in using sports as therapy.
Although the scheme doesn’t guarantee a permanent job, when the project comes to an end, it is aiming to provide 150 entry level opportunities, including apprenticeships.