Placement Policy

PURPOSE

To ensure all students receive training and assessment relevant to vocational outcomes of their course.

POLICY

All CMC courses require students to demonstrate skills working across all age groups. ie Children’s Services (0-6yrs) or Out of School Hours Care (6-12yrs). During each course, students will need to demonstrate this range of skills in either their own workplace, or undertake a placement in another service.
Placements fall into 4 categories:

An external placement where a student completes a set number of days/weeks in another location owned by the same employer, The placement will be in a location that is relevant to the training that is being completed. The requirement of this placement to be completed will be negotiated on an individual basis with students and their supervisors.
An internal placement where a student completes a set number of days/weeks with another age group in the same workplace, The requirement of this placement to be completed will be negotiated on an individual basis with students and their supervisors.
An allocated visit or number of visits to other services. The purpose of these visits is for the student to observe other program environments, programs, interactions and/or procedures etc. The requirement of these visits will be negotiated on an individual basis with students and their supervisors.
An extended responsibility component of their course. A minimum of 2 weeks will be compulsory for all child care students at the end of each qualification. This placement is undertaken within their current workplace.

The tasks associated with either or all of these components may be different from the normal duties in a workplace as students will be given the opportunity to undertake a range of tasks or observe different skills than that of their current position within the organisation.

Philosophy on Placement Programs

CMC - Training at Work considers the experience that students receive whilst working at their current place of employment extremely valuable. The undertaking of training on-the-job is seen as a more vigorous method of training and assessment as the student is been trained and assessed via formative assessment on a daily basis by the employer and workplace supervisor and via both a formative and summative assessment process by CMC - Training at Work.

External Placement

Where a student is unable to gain enough experience at the current place of employment to complete the training package for any reason determined by the CMC Training at Work trainer and the workplace, a suitable external placement could be organised by the workplace and supported by CMC.

As outlined above, the external placement component will not be compulsory. It is to be negotiated individually on a student by student basis with the employer or the relevant workplace supervisor, the CMC trainer and the Training Reference Group (where relevant)

Internal Placement

Where a student is unable to demonstrate current skill or prior experience with all age groups, they may be required to complete a placement with another age group ie move from a babies room to a 3-5 rooms etc.

As outlined above, the internal placement component will not be compulsory. It is to be negotiated individually on a student by student basis according to the students experience and with the employer or the relevant workplace supervisor, the CMC trainer and the Training Reference Group (where relevant)

Service Visits

Where a student has limited experience in working within child care or where their current workplace is only able to provide one perspective about a program area, the student may be required to visit one or a number of similar services with a view to gaining a broader perspective of service types, programming styles, different environments, staff working with different client groups etc

The requirement of students to undertake these visits will be decided on a student by student basis with the employer or the relevant workplace supervisor and the CMC trainer.

Extended Responsibility Placement

In order for students to demonstrate that they have the skills required to complete a qualification, they will be required to complete a minimum of 2 weeks placement prior to the completion of their course.

This requirement applies to all qualifications and the tasks associated with each placement will be designed according to the qualification itself. I.e. a student completing a Certificate III or IV will complete tasks associated with the level of skill required for Cert III or IV. Likewise a student completing a Diploma level qualification will need to demonstrate the skills required of this position.

The completion of this component is seen as a valuable method of observing skills directly related to the course they are completing. It demonstrates a student's capacity to work within this level of responsibility.

Implementation

The implementation of a placement program would occur under the following situations:

Where students are working in a service and need experience working in other types of services. Eg: Occasional care to Long Day Care; Long Day Care to Occasional Care; Small Outside School Hours Care Programs to Large programs.
Where a student or group of students need/s to gain experience working with a variety of age groups.
Where a student or group of students need/s gain a broader practical knowledge from other similar service types.
Where a recommendation has been included as part of a Training Reference Group. Eg. An employer would like all students to gain skills and knowledge from other programs they operate.
Where a student is not working in the capacity of the qualification they are studying.

Assessment Context
It is not expected that CMC - Training at Work will assess students whilst undertaking a placement program. We will however, allocate specific tasks for a student to complete and/or observe whilst on placement.

The allocation of these tasks will be negotiated with the workplace supervisor and the Training Reference Group for that employer where possible.

Specific reference will be made to these placements in the supervisor logs and the training plans and these will be signed-off by the supervisor on completion.