Spotlight on our Licensed Trainer community
Are you interested in Licensed Training for your organisation – either as a decision-maker who wants to explore having Licensed Trainers, or a practitioner who thinks you and your organisation would benefit from Licensed Star Trainers? Not sure about what it involves or how it can benefit you?
We spoke to some of the fantastic members of our Licensed Trainer community who shared their experiences with us. They spoke about why their organisation chose to have Licensed Trainers, what benefits they and their organisation had gained, and the support available to them as Licensed Trainers.
If you’d like to know more about becoming a Licensed Trainer please get in touch with us and we’ll be happy to chat with you: info@triangleconsulting.co.uk
Lea Jackson is the Youth Services Manager at St Basils, a charity that works with young people aged 16-25 who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. He leads on Outcome Stars and has been delivering Licensed Training for over eight years, using the Home Star and Young Persons Star.
Bev Haigh is a Trainer at People Plus, delivering the Restart Scheme in Wales on behalf of Serco. Serco are a prime provider delivering the contract on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions. The scheme aims to help long-term unemployed people to start working. Bev trains employment advisors on the Work Star and has trained over 200 advisors since the beginning of the programme.
Martina Konvrzková is the Innovation Manager at STŘEP, The Czech Family Strengthening Centre, a non-governmental, non-profit organisation that delivers social services to socially vulnerable families with children at risk. She is a Licensed Trainer training social workers and other staff at STŘEP in the Family Star Plus and My Star.
Eamonn Beirne is an Employment Advisor on the Refugee Employability Programme a programme that provides tailored support to refugees who are looking to gain meaningful employment and to help them settle into life across Yorkshire and the Humber. He trains workers on The Integration Star.
What is a Licensed Star Trainer?
The Licensed Trainer (LT) programme is Triangle’s ‘train-the-trainer’ offer. A Licensed Trainer is someone who has been trained and licensed by Triangle to run the Core Training programme for the Outcomes Star within their organisation. Once trained, a Licensed Trainer can deliver this essential course to all staff who will be using the Star in their work.
It can be an excellent way for organisations to roll-out the Star at scale and promote consistent and expert use of the Star with the people you support. Having a Licensed Trainer means you can be more flexible with when and how you deliver training and can be a cost-effective way to ensure all your staff are up to date with core Star training. Learn more here
Becoming a Licensed Trainer
Martina Konvrzková is a Licensed Trainer training social workers and other staff at STŘEP in the Family Star Plus and My Star. When they began a pilot project the team decided it would be helpful to train Martina as a Licensed Trainer. This meant she was able to deliver Core Star training to other team members who were motivated and engaged while providing ongoing support to the team to support the pilot project.
As an international user of the Star, Martina says she found the process of becoming a Licensed Trainer useful.
“It was a social innovation for us really. Our team was really motivated and very engaged. Training was well received, and we then decided to get me trained as an in-house trainer. We found this practical; I could provide ongoing support to the team, and I could also be supported,” she says.
For Bev Haigh, a Trainer at PeoplePlus, becoming a Licensed Trainer was part of her induction to her role. Bev took up LT training when she began working on the Restart Wales Employability Programme, using the Work Star. Since then, she has delivered core training to over 200 people. She says that the training has been pivotal to her role to do her job properly.
To be a Licensed Trainer you must fill out an application form, complete a two-day train-the-trainer course and have an active annual Licence. Learn more about how to become a Licensed trainer here.
Benefits of having a Licensed Trainer
Lea Jackson is the Youth Services Manager at St Basils. After using the Home Star (previously the Homelessness Star) for several years, he took the decision to switch to using the Young Persons Star. He said his experience being an LT helped when implementing the Young Persons Star at St Basils and embedding the Star into their practice.
Lea enjoyed being able to offer core training to staff to help them upskill, as well as being able to use his expertise to mentor other Licensed Trainers at St Basils.
“Through this I get to long arm support everybody and for me – I just thrive on practitioners and staff having that ‘lightbulb moment’ as I call it where practitioners can reflect and enhance their existing knowledge and embed newly refreshed skills. As long as everybody leaves this training having that lightbulb moment, whether they share it or its private where they can go away and do something in a different or more energised way, then I have done my job,” says Lea.
He also points to the cost-effective nature of having Licensed trainers: “The whole idea of having an in-house trainer is that it makes it a more affordable option than sending people on cost-related day of training which then could be quite expensive.”
For Eamonn Beirne, an Employment Advisor at The Growth Company, the flexibility of being able to deliver Core Course training has been key. As the company he works for delivers multiple programmes across different contracts there is sometimes a need to deliver training quickly.
In January 2024 he was able to deliver core training to over 90 people over a period of six or seven sessions, using an online format.
The training was so successful he received an internal ‘Above and Beyond’ award from management who said, “The feedback from trainees showed that the training benefited their understanding and confidence in using the Outcomes Star to support customers. His efforts have promoted a culture of collaboration and success across contracts, strengthening our partnerships as we work towards shared goals.”
This flexibility can be key if your organisation has a high turnover of staff, or limited time for training. For example, there is a standard One Day Introduction to the Star core course, LT’s can break this up into bite-sized chunks, and run this over several days, to complement other pieces of training and development or to give people the chance to try completing one or two Stars between sessions.
Benefits of having a Licensed Trainer
- Flexible training – break up training into bite-sized chunks that work for your organisation, or train across different days
- Build skills and expertise – create a legacy of skills and expertise about the Star within your organisation
- Cost-effective training – having Licensed Trainers can help keep training costs down, especially if you have a high turnover of staff
- Implementation support – Licensed Trainers can be invaluable when it comes to implementing the Star and supporting key staff to use the Star with service users
To learn more about the benefits of having a Licensed Trainer please visit our Licensed Star Trainer page.
What sort of support do Licensed Trainers get?
As a Licensed Trainer you will receive train-the-trainer training and ongoing support from Triangle with a dedicated contact to support them. Bev Haighs says she has found the support of her contact at Triangle really helpful. “I know if I’ve ever got a problem or a question I can always reach out, especially to Laura (Bev’s contact) and say, ‘help’, and she does, it’s great.”
There are also Continuing Professional Development (CPD) sessions which give LTs an opportunity to network with other members of the Licensed Training community. Martina says, “I have attended CPD sessions and there are a lot of topics like training, trainer skills, how to develop training skills, and how to work with some tricky areas to get some inspiration. It really helps to get you updated. You don’t stay in place but move forward. This is something we try to do, but it is supported by being part of this trainers’ community.”
Lea Jackson has also enjoyed his CPD sessions, which are delivered remotely, “Everyone is lovely, and everyone is in the same situation, so there is definitely a sense of community that I feel very much a part of.”
Lea continues, “for me, it’s about having an insight in regard to your support community and being able to support staff to think in a really fresh way regarding engagement with young people or with their service users. So, for me it’s a privilege. It’s a privilege to be able to deliver training to my own practitioners, to support them to be able to achieve the maximum out of the time that they are with their clients, supporting them to move forward.”
Continuing Professional Development sessions for Licensed Trainers:
Here is a taste of the types of CPD sessions we have held so far in 2024:
- Star Online for Trainers: a live demo with time for Q&A around using our online system and the training site
- Bringing Enabling help to life (in practice): delving into the Enabling help approach to support work
- Supporting practitioners to engage service users collaboratively: Exploring creative collaboration to support a positive and accessible approach to Star completion
- Motivational Interviewing & the Outcomes Star: using MI techniques with the Outcomes Star
- Developing trainer skills: Using the ‘I do, you do, we do’ approach in Outcomes Star training
- Star Development and review: Exploring how Triangle approaches Star Development and Star reviews
- The Outcomes Star and Trauma informed practice: Nick Karr looks at how the Star is becoming more trauma informed and how this can be embedded into Outcomes Star training