Grandmother achieves team leader apprenticeship

Grandmother Sharon Davies faced more challenges than usual when she embarked on a Performance Through People (PTP) apprenticeship to help further her career.

The former lifeguard and doctor 's receptionist, who now works in Early Help at Walsall Council, had to contend with the coronavirus pandemic, three work-placed secondments, and a lack of school qualifications.

However Mrs Davies, aged 50, who has three children and four grandchildren - two of them born during her course - overcame all obstacles to achieve her team leader/supervisor Advanced Apprenticeship.

And she was quick to praise staff at top Midland training group PTP, which is part of the BCTG Group, for helping her to get over the line.

Mrs Davies, who is now enjoying the role of North Early Help partnership officer at Walsall Council, said: “I decided to take up the apprenticeship after seeing it advertised internally as I had wanted to take on a senior role and thought 'I think I can do this ', so I went for it.

“It seemed like a mountain to climb at the beginning as when I went to the first workshop everyone was younger than me but seemed to have all the answers.

“I really wasn 't very confident at all when I started, and I 'd hated maths since school so having to do that made things even worse. ”

In fact, the first obstacle Mrs Davies had to overcome was her lack of maths and English qualifications, so she studied for Functional Skills Level 2 in both subjects, equivalent to GCSEs.

She achieved distinctions in all three of her course exams, despite having to change to remote online studies when Covid-19 led to lockdown.

At the same time that her training changed to workshops and tutorials delivered on-line, Mrs Davies was also seconded on three occasions which brought the challenges of new teams and working practices.

She said: “The first secondment was due to staffing issues caused by to the pandemic, but the other two were completely new teams within Early Help. ”

If that wasn 't enough for her to contend with, Mrs Davies also became a grandmother for the third and fourth time within a couple of days in August 2020.

She added: “The apprenticeship should have been 18 months, but the pandemic and the secondments meant it took a little bit longer. But it was really good and I really enjoyed it. ”

Karen Yeomans, a quality lead at PTP, said: “We always knew that Sharon would be successful as she clearly had experience of managing a team and that shone through. We just needed to make her believe in herself. ”