UCC’s Adult Continuing Education comes to Waterford

University College Cork has introduced a suite of its Adult Continuing Education (ACE) courses which will commence in Waterford in September.

ACE at University College Cork is the longest established dedicated centre for adult and lifelong learning in the Irish University system.  Over the past several decades ACE has developed a strong tradition of delivering university accredited Continuing Professional Development and Executive Education courses to hundreds of professionals in a wide range of disciplines.

The suite of courses, which will commence at the NAS Training Centre in the Cleaboy Business Park in September, was officially launched by the Mayor of Waterford, Cllr. Jim D’Arcy this week.

Commenting on the launch of the portfolio of courses, Waterford native, Ms. Lyndsey El Amoud, ACE Business Development Officer, was delighted that the highly acclaimed courses will be available in Waterford.

“These courses will offer those in Waterford and the South East the opportunity to progress their careers or to get back into the jobs market.  All of the courses are fully accredited by UCC, with participants registering as UCC students and graduating at UCC upon completion.”

“The choice of courses is quite broad and will have a wide appeal to people who are either currently in the workforce wishing to up-skill, acquire new skills and competencies or those who are unemployed and considering their career options.”

Lyndsey added, “A number of these programmes are also accredited by nationally and internationally recognised professional bodies, including the Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) and the Irish Institute of Training and Development (IITD).”

The Mayor of Waterford, Cllr. Jim D’Arcy said that the suite of courses is a welcome addition to the adult education landscape in Waterford and added that he had no doubt the project would be just as much a success in Waterford as it is in the other outreach centres of Kerry and Limerick.

The courses range from NFQ Levels 7 to 9 and include, among others, a Higher Diploma in Safety, Health and Welfare at Work, a Higher Diploma in Learning, Development and Work-Based Training and a Masters in Personal and Management Coaching.

The courses will be held in the NAS Training Centre, in the Cleaboy Business Park.  Since opening its doors in Waterford in 2006, the NAS Training Centre has earned a reputation for excellence in providing a wide range of training courses and programmes set in a centrally located state of the art facility.

To find out more about the programmes log onto www.ucc.ie or contact ACE on 021 4904700.

Waterford artists take flight!

Waterford City Enterprise Board and Waterford Adult Education Centre (WAEC) recently launched “First Flight”, an enterprise programme which assists small craft start-ups.

Based in the Kite Design Studio, in the heart of Waterford’s Viking Triangle, First Flight is already working with the first group of students, providing them with workspace, mentoring assistance and practical business advice.  All of the students are currently undertaking the Craft and Fashion Design programmes at Waterford Adult Education Centre.

According to Helena Finlay, Course Co-ordinator, WAEC, First Flight is a great opportunity for craft start-ups to move into the professional workplace. 

 

“This is an exciting collaboration with Waterford City Enterprise Board as it gives our students the chance to take their business ideas to the next level.  Waterford has a really strong craft heritage, in everything from fashion design, jewellery and glassware.”

“At WAEC, our students learn and develop skills in art, craft and design to produce unique creations, all the while acquiring a Fetac Level 5 qualification.  What First Flight does is help them to then develop their commercial and business acumen.  The students, by working in such a vibrant and inspired setting as the Kite Design Studio, are in a better position to grow their businesses commercially.”

The three businesses undertaking the First Flight Programme are Andrew Phelan of Crea Jewellery Design, Lucia Domoradova of Lutsia Fashions and Lenka Jindrichova of Blossom Jewellery Design.

Ciaran Cullen, Chief Executive, Waterford City Enterprise Board is delighted to develop the project.  “Waterford City Enterprise Board has worked closely with the Kite Design Studio over the last two and a half years and in that time we have seen it home to many new, exciting and successful businesses.  The Kite Design Studio has helped to consolidate Waterford’s well regarded creative tradition in glass making, jewellery and ceramics.” 

Ciaran added, “Due to the progress and accomplishments of these businesses Waterford City Enterprise Board is now in a position to move away from the day to day running of the studio.  However our ethos remains to encourage and harness start-ups.”

“That’s why we are very excited about the budding new craft enterprises coming through Waterford Adult Education Centre and are delighted to be in a position to help ease their transition into the business space.”

“At Waterford City Enterprise Board we offer assistance in the form of mentoring and financial contributions to start-ups that have the potential to grow and showcase Waterford’s entrepreneurial spirit, something that these three start ups have in abundance.”

If you want to find out more about the free Art, Craft and Design Programmes

at Waterford Adult Education Centre, visit www.adulteducationcentre.ie or call 051 852803.  If you have a start- up idea talk to Waterford City Enterprise Board by calling 051 852883 or log onto www.waterfordceb.com.

Home Instead launches Free Alzheimers’s Training Workshops

Dementia affects almost 44,000 people in Ireland and touches the lives of 50,000 carers and hundreds of thousands of family members. For every one person suffering from Alzheimer’s, there are a handful of people who help care for that individual.  Almost always, these friends and family members helping have no experience or training to care for someone with the disease

Home Instead Senior Care in Waterford is working to change that by offering free Alzheimer’s CARE training programmes which will provide families in the Waterford area with the much needed support and advice to care for a loved one with Alzheimer’s. The 3 hour evening training is being offered on Wednesday, June 19^th and again on June 26^th.

Based on input from renowned ageing and dementia experts, the Alzheimer’s CARE programme (Changing Ageing Through Research and Education SM) offers CAREGivers innovative resources for coping with the challenges presented by the disease while maintaining their loved one’s dignity and helping them live more fulfilling lives.

Home Instead Senior Care is the world's leading provider of in-home care services for seniors, with nearly 1,000 locations.  Danette Connolly opened Home Instead Senior Care in Waterford in January 2009.

This first-of-its-kind family training programme takes place at Home Instead Senior Care in the Cleaboy Business Park and offers family members a fresh approach to providing Alzheimer’s care, one that encourages mental engagement to help relatives remain safely at home and in familiar surroundings as long as possible. 

If you are a caregiver of a family member living with Alzheimer’s disease and would like to find out more about Home Instead’s Alzheimer’s CARE Programme, please visit www.helpforalzheimersfamilies.com or call Home Instead Senior Care on 051 – 333966 to book a place on one of the programmes.

Home Instead Senior Care addresses care concern issues

Home Instead Senior Care, a leading global provider of home care services for seniors, expressed its grave concern at the recent publication of complaints received by the HSE around the provision of home care services.

A recent Irish Times article revealed that bad practice continues in the sector and examples of such unacceptable practice included poor standards of intimate care, allegations of theft and cases of staff not showing up resulting in their clients being left in bed for prolonged periods of time.

According to Danette Connolly, Director of Care, Home Instead Waterford, these incidents are shocking and wholly unacceptable.  “Every day across the state, tens of thousand of older people and their families depend on home care services to allow them to stay in their own homes.  Every organisation, whether it’s the HSE, a not-for-profit organisation or a private care provider, has a responsibility to provide a level of care that is beyond reproach.”

Danette added, “What was particularly disturbing about the report was that the incidents cited would have caused a lot of distress and anguish to those involved.  Most people who avail of home care do so to enable them to remain and feel safe in their own homes.  Whilst the majority of carers go above and beyond the call of duty to provide a high level of care, this report has cast a shadow on the complete sector.”

Whilst the homecare sector still remains to this day unregulated, Home Instead Senior Care, a member of HCCI (Home and Community Care Ireland), welcomes and lobbies for regulation.  The Department of Health has committed to regulating public and private home care services under the Programme for Government 2011- 2016, however Danette would like to see standard setting in the sector expedited.

Home Instead does adhere to a strict code of practice to ensure incidents like these never occur.  Some of the measures in place include; Garda vetting of all Home Instead Senior Care CareGIVERs, all CareGIVERs are Fetac qualified or working towards that qualification, all CareGIVERs are fully insured and bonded, a daily client log book allows family members to monitor the activities of CareGIVERs, continual in-home assessment of the client and CareGIVER is carried out by Home Instead’s Nursing team and Home Instead also provides a 24 hour on call service.

Home Instead Senior Care was also awarded ISO certification which copper-fastens its commitment to quality care, customer service and continual improvement.

Danette continued, “In order to provide an exceptional and trusted level of care to seniors, regulation needs to put in place across the sector, the selection and recruitment process should be stringent and a competent level of back up and support needs to be provided to all carers, as they have a duty of care to their clients.  Every body has the right to feel safe and cared for in their own homes.”

If you have any concerns about senior care services, the HSE Information line is open Monday to Saturday from 8am to 8pm – 1850 24 1850.

Home Instead Senior Care highlights “black economy” care concerns

Home Instead Senior Care, which provides home care services for our seniors, recently highlighted its concerns surrounding the growing “black economy” in the elderly care sector.

With a rapidly expanding population of over 65s, senior care services have never been more in demand and this has lead to a culture of unregulated, uninsured and unvetted carers providing services in the marketplace.

Home Instead Senior Care has warned of the consequences of availing of such unregulated services.  Danette Connolly, Director of Care, said that all care providers should be regulated and undergo external auditing processes, and this is something that Home Instead Senior Care has been campaigning for.

“Some of the statistics that are emerging surrounding senior care in Ireland are frightening.  There are a growing number of individual carers and companies providing home care services and are not following good practice. This can cause undue stress and worry to the senior and their family.”

Danette added, “Currently Ireland’s home care market is completely unregulated. Seniors are availing of care that is not monitored and some are directly employing carers, leaving themselves vulnerable as they are the employer but are not necessary fulfilling all the employer obligations, such as insurance cover, health and safety regulations and tax requirements.”

According to Linda Gallagher, Joint Managing Director of First Ireland, specialist Insurance Brokers to the care industry, people engaging carers through the black economy can find themselves in a vulnerable position if an accident occurs.

“It is most likely in such cases that the carer will not carry their own insurance cover.  In the senior care sector the number one claim relates to injuries caused either to the carer or the senior themselves by their moving and handling.  If the carer is not employed by a professional, insured senior care specialist company, and sustains an injury, they will be advised to sue the homeowner or whoever engaged their services.  In addition, the senior themselves will have no recourse to anybody in the event of them sustaining an injury.”

In order to administer competent and effective home care all care providers should be fully insured, attend to Garda vetting and the care staff should be trained, supervised and constantly monitored, which will alleviate a lot of stress and worry for seniors and their families.

Home Instead Senior Care CAREGivers are regularly monitored and undergo Gardai vetting.  Home Instead Senior Care was also recently awarded ISO certification which copper-fastens its commitment to quality care, customer service and continual improvement.

ISO 9001, which is administered by the International Organisation for Standardisation, is recognised globally as the guideline for establishing and maintaining an effective quality management system for businesses in any sector.

For further information about the services of Home Instead Senior Care log onto www.homeinstead.ie or call 051 333966

Former Dragon speaks at FREE business start-up seminar

Waterford City Enterprise Board’s ‘Fresh Start’ seminar at the Tower Hotel last Thursday attracted a large and enthusiastic audience of budding entrepreneurs.

Over 90 attendees listened to start up advice from Mary Doherty of Granny Maddox and Sean Egan of Sean Egan Artglass, and information on how to best develop an idea into a business from Liam Murphy of the Department of Social Protect and Ciaran Cullen, CEO, Waterford City Enterprise Board.

An inspiring and enlightening hour was provided by entrepreneur Sean Gallagher. Anecdotes, advice and encouragement was the theme of his talk, explaining that positivity and hard work is essential to success. “Surround yourself with like-minded positive people and avoid those who will bring negative elements into your life”, said the former Dragon.

Following a morning of uplifting speeches Ciaran Cullen was delighted with the event, “There was a great atmosphere in the room, principally supplied by Sean Gallagher’s presence and encouragement. You could tell that the audience were taking it all in. I was encouraged by both the number of attendees and the volume of interaction, especially during the Q&A session, it was really heartening.”

“We are planning a number of ‘Start your own business’ courses over the coming months and this morning we filled at least one of these courses”, Ciaran added.

Waterford City Enterprise Board offers support services for start-up and existing SME’s in Waterford city. If you have a new business idea or are running a business that requires assistance you can contact the Enterprise Board by phoning Celia on 051-852883 or logging on to www.waterfordceb.com.

13 year old Waterford student to address world’s largest entrepreneur conference

What do LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter, Amazon and Waterford’s Casey Games have in common? They will all be speaking at the world’s largest conference for entrepreneurs in the U.S. on May 17^th and18th.

Jordan Casey is the 13 year old Waterford student who rose to fame last year as the youngest person in Europe to develop an app for sale on the Apple App Store.

Following a year of worldwide seminars, conferences, innovation awards and four further successful game launches Jordan has been invited to speak at the prestigious 20^th Annual TiEcon conference, to be held in Santa Clara, California. Jordan is the youngest entrepreneur ever to speak at the Conference and will address the 4,000 delegates on the topic, “Things I learned the hard way as a young CEO.”

TiE is a global not for profit organisation focused on fostering and enabling entrepreneurship through mentoring, education and networking and is the world’s largest conference for entrepreneurs. The main speakers include Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn; Sajai Krishnan, GM of Amazon Web Services; Satya Nadella, President of Server & Tools Business at Microsoft, while other speakers are from Net flicks, Pay Pal, IBM, Intel, ESPN, Facebook, Twitter and Ericsson.

Since the age of 9 Jordan has been putting content on the web. In January 2012 he released the app, ‘Alien Ball vs. Humans’, described by Apple executives as a version of the classic ‘Space Invaders’ and was the first step on the ladder for this talented young developer.

In October 2012 he released a game called “Save the Day”; it was the official game for National Children’s day in Brazil. His first ‘complex’ game was called Greenboy Touch and was released in November 2012. It is based on a boy who finds himself lost in a forest. In early January this year he launched a multiplayer game called ‘Food World’ while in March he started working on his next game, ‘My Little World’ an adventure game about a tiny creature named JC who lives in a back garden and wants to see the real world. He is aiming for a June release.

Jordan is constantly in demand as a conference speaker, over the past few months he has spoken in Germany, England, France and India. He is just back from Amsterdam where he was invited to both the Festival of Games and the TNW Europe conference, labelled Europe’s most influential tech event. And while in California he has been invited to visit Adobe headquarters in San Jose.

At first Jordan’s parents, Clyde and Louise did not recognise the talent they had under their roof, “We are very of proud Jordan considering he taught himself how to code and write the programmes. He has worked so hard on this, but also gets lots of support. For instance Waterford City Council, Enterprise Ireland and Waterford City Enterprise Board are all supporting our trip to the States. We really could not have gone without their help,” said Clyde Casey.

So, what’s next for Jordan? As well as more games to be developed and launched, another aspect of the company is to encourage young kids to code. Jordan explained, “I’m just one of many young programmers in Waterford, I believe that if kids think ‘Coding is Cool’ they may develop an interest in increasing their own programming skills. Kids from seven years of age can learn some coding and programming themselves because of the technology available, however, coding and programming are not being taught as a subject in schools. I would like to make kids aware of coding and promote it.”

For more details on Casey Games follow Jordan’s blog on www.caseygameswebsite.blogspot.ie