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Welcome to NSW Community Services and Health ITAB

From the Executive Director-August 2010

The end of the financial year has come and gone, giving us a chance to review our activities over the past six months and to be in touch with our members reminding them to renew their membership for 2011-2012.

Keep your eye on our web site for details of our Annual General Meeting and Forum which is being held in November. Members are welcome to attend. The Board met in June for our Annual Strategic Planning Day. This saw intense activity and discussion to ensure the focus and direction of the CSH ITAB remains firmly grounded in the current needs and priorities of our broad industry sectors.

Thank you to all our members who have supported the CSH ITAB throughout the past year, attending forums and networks, providing industry advice ensuring we have current information to pass on and utilising the CSH ITAB’s consultation services.

In particular our Assessor Networks go from strength to strength and we are about to instigate our Manager’s Network to bring together managers of NGOs. If you would like to participate in this opportunity let us know by emailing tcasey@csh-itab.com.au  The foremost aim is to provide practicing managers with an informal session where professional conversations, reflections and networking are generously shared to:

• support and promote professionalism
• improve key management skills
• address demanding challenges faced by community services organisations and
• find effective strategies to solve problems
• .

Keeping you up to date

Together with other stakeholders we have been supporting the Board of Studies to develop the Human Services Industry Curriculum Framework. This will enable Year 11 and 12 students to study as part of their HSC, Certificates III in

• Allied Health Assistance or
• Health Services Assistance or
• Aged Care.

They will also be able to elect to sit an exam at the end of Year 12 and have their marks count toward the Australian Tertiary Education Ranking (ATER - previously the UAI) which universities use as their entrance criteria for many courses. If endorsed by the Board later this month, students may be able to commence this in 2011 across NSW.

We have had a busy time contributing to consultative forums initiated at both the State and Federal levels. Amongst them:

• The Australian Qualifications Framework Council is working on Strengthening the AQF and looking for written feedback to their July 2010 Consultation Paper by August 4th. If you haven’t seen the proposed changes to the framework and policies underpinning the AQF, go to www.aqf.edu.au
• The National VET Equity Advisory Council (NVEAC) convened a forum for feedback to their Equity Blueprint for VET which will set out a vision and strategies to ensure the VET system fully supports all learners in gaining skills and improving their opportunities in life.
• PhilipsKPA has been contracted to manage a project to Explore new and innovative models for tertiary pathways that can bring university and VET closer together for BVET. They convened a forum of stakeholders to discuss the directions emerging from their research so far.
• Responding to the Productivity Commission’s Vocational Education and Training Issues paper seeking feed back on the VET Workforce. 

Projects

In June we launched our new Oral Health in Aged Care free online training resource. This resource is for aged care workers in residential aged care facilities, dental assistants who wish to gain knowledge specific to older people or aged care workplace supervisors and employees responsible for direct client care. It was developed by the CSH ITAB in partnership with the NSW Dental Assistants’ (Professional) Association and is located on our moodle site at www.workplaceskills.com.au

We are well underway with our online project: Building Workforce Capacity in the Aged Care Sector. Industry partners are providing opportunities for workplace videos to be shot and relevant content and structure to be developed to support potential and existing aged are workers who have English as a second language to become competent in the cultural and technical language of their workplace.

PPPs

The Department of Education and Training is preparing for the implementation of the next phase (2011- 2012) of the Productivity Places Program (PPP) and the CSH ITAB has provided extensive industry advice to guide the Department’s selection of available qualifications to enable access for RTOs and industry. The Community Services and Health Industry Skills Council (CSHISC) has been working with industry around Australia to implement Enterprise Based Productivity Place Program (EBPPP). To date several NSW based organisations have been successful in achieving places in this program.

CSHISC

We have been working closely with CSHISC supporting them to address:

• the ongoing qualification and unit updates to both CHC08 and HLT07
• the new requirements recently introduced by the NQC for qualification packaging rules. All qualifications must have elective choices totaling at least one third of the units in the framework. The ISC is seeking exemption or exception for some qualifications in both Training Packages. For further details please visit the ISC website www.cshisc.com.au

All in all a busy time to date and it looks set to continue! We at CSH ITAB are looking forward to you staying in touch and keeping us in your world.

Last updated: 29 July 2010

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