For Carers who want to work or study?
Thinking About Work, Study or Starting Something of Your Own?
You have got something you would like to be doing: a job, a course, a business of your own. Vocational Pathways is free coaching to help you get there, built around your caring role.
You Do Not Have to Choose Between Caring and Working
Meals, medication, appointments, paperwork, getting someone to where they need to be. If that is your week, you are already organising, problem solving and keeping a lot of plates spinning. Those are skills, and they transfer.
You do not need to call yourself a Carer to use this program. You do not need to be related to the person you look after. You do not even need a job in mind: plenty of people start with nothing more firm than a sense that they are ready for something.
Coaching That Fits Around Your Caring Role
You work one on one with a Vocational Coach
Together you work out what you want, what is realistic alongside your caring role, and what the next step actually looks like.
You can have up to six individual sessions. What you do in them is up to you. Sessions can cover:
- Writing or updating your resume
- Cover letters
- Setting up your SEEK profile and using job sites well
- Filling in applications
- Preparing for interviews, including practice interviews
- Looking at career options and what work might suit you now
- Working out which of your skills transfer, including the ones you have built while caring
- Getting ready to work for yourself, and connecting you with self-employment support
The point is that you come out able to do this yourself. Your coach is not there to apply on your behalf, they are there so the next application, and the one after that, is one you can handle on your own.
Three Ways In
Depending on what you want, your coaching leads into one of three pathways. Your coach will talk them through with you and you can change your mind.
Study Pathway
For when the next step needs a qualification, a short course or a refresher. Your coach helps you find the right course and get enrolled.
Work Placement Pathway
For when you want experience, a current reference or a way back into a workplace after time away.
Self Employment Readiness Pathway
For when you want to work for yourself. Your coach helps you test the idea and connects you with the services that support new small businesses.
Employers Who Understand Carers at Work
Finding work is easier when the workplace already understands what Carers at work need.
Part of what we do is build relationships with South Australian employers who get it: that caring is ongoing rather than an emergency, that flexibility is what makes a good worker stay, and that someone managing a household, a roster of appointments and a budget has skills worth hiring.
Your coach can point you towards employers we work with and help you think through what to say about your caring role, when to say it, and what you are entitled to ask for. What you disclose is always your decision.