Session 3: Identifying Skills

Key objective

Identify the skills required within a team running a residential experience.

Task

Explain to participants that it is not expected that one person has all the skills required and therefore having a team of people with the right skills on a residential experience is important. Using scenarios in the next task they are going to look at what skills they will need from the staffing team during the residential experience.

Split the participants into pairs or groups depending on the numbers. Give each a different scenario. There are some examples in Worksheet 2 or you can create your own.

The groups have 15 minutes to consider and report back.

They will need to think about the following:

• What jobs need to be done?
• What skills are needed to do these jobs?
• Who has these skills?
• How could the young people do it as part of their experience?
• What are the various elements of the experience for which there needs to be safety considerations?
• What training needs to be provided?

Report back

Using the task they have just done, get the groups to report back, drawing out the main points (there are some examples in Handout 2 to work from if you have used the scenarios) and summarise as follows:

• By identifying the jobs that need doing and the skills associated, it’s easier to look at who could do the roles
• The importance of the responsibilities of the young people; what they do, what daily duties form part of their experience?
• Need for training and support, before, during and after the experience for the staff team.
• Safety considerations for the scenario could include: food hygiene; fire safety; carbon monoxide; knife, axe and saw use, minibuses, site layout, activities requiring permits and free time, first aid provision, In Touch.

By identifying the duties and activities that may need to be carried out, and what the young people can do, participants can see the different roles that a staff team need to fulfil and what skills are needed. These skills could be gained by further training, involving more experienced leaders or drawing on new volunteers like parents to help with the experience. They also need to be aware of the required ratios of young people to adults, which can be found in the latest version of POR