Delivery approach
Recognising the important contribution of existing social enterprise training, including accredited programmes, the project will put together a comprehensive collection of existing training courses for social enterprise managers and advisers, including training materials and resources. These will be surveyed and analysed to inform the development of the new occupational standards and training programmes.

The professional development and training resources that the project generates will be based on rigorous occupational mapping and functional analysis to establish the required competencies and the knowledge and understanding that underpin them. The project is working in collaboration with SFEDI (Small Firms Enterprise Development Initiative) and other partners to map and identify competencies in the skills and knowledge of social enterprise managers and business advisers and to establish national occupational standards and professional qualifications. Occupational mapping will be carried out across the UK, to establish occupational competencies for both social enterprise managers and social enterprise business advisers. These competencies will be compared with existing (generic) standards such as those for management and business advice and a gap analysis will be carried out, to establish to what extent new standards specifically relating to social enterprise are required. Once this has been done we will undertake a skill gap and training needs analysis amongst practitioners.

On the basis of these standards, qualifications and assessment frameworks for social enterprise management and business advice will be developed. The new training materials will be piloted with advisers working in Business Links, local authorities, co-operative development agencies, community and voluntary sector training agencies etc and managers and trustees of social enterprises. The project will also develop and field test parallel resources for use by such trainers directly with social enterprise managers and trustees. In order to achieve maximum acceptance in mainstream business and business support communities, the new training courses will be accredited. This will enable all trainees to gain recognised vocational qualifications with ‘section 97’ status. It will also enable training programmes to access Learning and Skills Council and similar funding.

In addition, the project will seek to strengthen the delivery infrastructure to ensure the course is self-sustaining through rolling out a training the trainers programme to deliver the new programme and raise awareness of the new qualifications through a national road show of events and seminars.