Testimonials: SDMS V QCF Learning and Skills for Windows

Nia Williams, Staff Development Administrator, Cartrefi Cymru:

“Cartrefi Cymru was established as a Charity and Company Limited by guarantee in 1989. It was founded by parents of people with learning difficulties and senior officers from the Welsh Voluntary Sector.

In 1983, the government in Wales had launched a ten year Strategy for the renewal and improvement of learning disability services. By 1989, most Local Authorities were making speedy progress in developing new services in line with the Strategy’s principles, but some were finding it difficult to develop a particularly important type of service, namely small-scale accommodation with skilled staff support.

This was the context in which it was seen that a new National Charity, Cartrefi Cymru, could provide the know-how and commitment, right across Wales, enabling local authorities to develop supported accommodation services and other new, high-quality services. Working in partnership with Local Authorities and Housing Associations, the Company quickly went from strength to strength, becoming the largest provider of home-based learning disability services in Wales. “We now employ in excess of 1100 staff working in over 100 teams from 11 offices”.

“We contacted SDMS as we wanted to replace our existing access database and after taking time to review the software and look at possible alternatives, we found that the Learning and Skills software which SDMS were able to offer would best match our current requirements and also provide additional functionality should our needs change.

Following the decision to purchase the software, SDMS worked closely with us on the process of implementing the software as smoothly and speedily as possible.

As we have over 800 Candidates participating in NVQ and the new QCFs, we needed to have this data from our Access database migrated into the SDMS product. The flexibility of SDMS was shown when they not only migrated this very important data but amended their software where we had very specific data items from our Access system which SDMS did not have – these were done as bespoke changes. The rigorous procedures of SDMS for Data Take On also helped us – this included On Line Meetings to review the data, written proposed solutions setting out where the Access data would go into SDMS and a clear sign off process. This inspired confidence.

The implementation has been supported by excellent On Line Training and also free On Line Implementation Reviews to help us keep to our targets. We are now at the stage where we have completed all the key phases from the implementation process and are beginning to see the benefits from the software we had foreseen at the beginning of the process”.

More information about the work provided by Cartrefi Cymru can be found at www.cartreficymru.org.

SDMS QCF Learning and Skills for Windows

Mrs Lynne White, Workforce Development Officer, Torfaen Social Care and Housing:

Torfaen Social Care and Housing is a part of Torfaen County Borough Council and is responsible for the provision of a wide range of Health and Social Care Services across the borough. Torfaen County Borough Council, along with the Torfaen Local Health Board has a joint Health, Social Care and Well-being Strategy as required by the Welsh Assembly.

This is designed to provide a coherent range of services to adults in the area involving close working relationships with a wide range of partners. This holistic view of all aspects of public services supports the delivery of quality Social Care.

“As a user of SDMS for the past 8 years, we have increasingly extended the use of the software - initially just using the Windows based product for Training Administration, then extending this to the e-Training web product and now recently extending the use of SDMS to help manage NVQ’s (now QCF’s). Throughout this process we have been supported by an extensive range of services from the SDMS Support team; Data Migrations, Remote and On Site Installations and of course responding to our day to day “how to I do that” questions.

We have used the software to help plan and administer training for our own staff as well as staff from service partners to improve their standards and skill sets.  We are now using the latest version of SDMS V Staff Development and Learning Management for Windows: Welsh Social Services Edition along with the Evaluation and Appraisal modules.  The core system enables us to plan Courses and enrol Candidates onto Courses along with the ability to report on aspects such as budgeting.  We rely heavily on the financial management side of the software to evaluate the spending from our training budgets.

Using the Evaluation module we are able to evaluate the impact to the staff following the training.

In 2006, we implemented SDMS V e-Training to extend the use of the software to allow members of the Social Care Partnership for Torfaen to view and book courses in an On Line environment. This has become a very constructive way to advertise courses and provide our partner organisations, who send their staff onto training courses, a method of viewing details of the courses which we run and then submitting, via their Line Manager, an application to attend the training course. These requests are then registered within the Windows application allowing the administration team to then approve or reject the application with an automated email response then being sent. As many of the organisations who are interested in our training work out the normal working hours of the administration team, providing 24/7 access to the details of the training courses saves us a great deal of time and provides the team with the ability to book onto training when they have a spare moment.

Over the past 6 Months we have implemented the NVQ/QCF Learning and Skills companion product to enable us to start recording details from our Assessment Centre about the Candidates we have registered on the NVQs and the Qualification and Credit Framework. Prior to the purchase of the NVQ Learning and Skills software, SDMS gave a clear commitment to modify and upgrade the software as the requirements of QCF changes came into place. The company has formed an On Line User Group to share ideas on these changes and has already released an initial QCF upgrade.

Of course one of the great advantages of using the NVQ/QCF product alongside the other uses of SDMS is that it provides a single coherent set of data about all aspects of learning and development – Staff Skills, Training and Qualifications”.

Torfaen Social Services
SDMS Staff Development and Learning Management for Windows
SDMS e-Training for Web and Intranet Access
SDMS QCF Learning and Skills for Windows