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During the year, City Care continued to build on our
established partnerships with local schools.
In May 2006 for Work Choice Day we hosted students from
four local high schools at our Milton St branch. The students
were given a tour of the yard and had a chance to experience
a number of work-related activities with some of our staff.
As part of our partnership with Christchurch Boys' High
School (CBHS) our staff have access to free computing
training. The school makes available their computer suite to
our staff and City Care has engaged the services of Lyndon
McEntee, a CBHS teacher, to facilitate the tutorials. Our
employees are working their way through the International
Computer Driver Licence, Level 2. This is a self paced
programme that caters for people with different levels of
competence with computers. 45 City Care employees have
taken up this opportunity so far.
City Care's rural firefighting team and 7th form Physical
Education students have paired up to the benefit of both.
As part of their curriculum, the students assess the fitness
of the firefighters, develop individual fitness programmes
for them and monitor their progress while the City Care staff
use the CBHS gym facilities for their fitness training.
In return, City Care offers a number of opportunities for
CBHS staff and students. As part of their career planning
programme, Year 10 classes visit City Care and interview
staff to find out about career pathways within the company.
The company also offers work placements at City Care for
CBHS students and recruits suitable individuals from the
school for our pre-apprenticeship programme. At the start
of 2006, the CBHS Principal and Deputy Principal participated
in a business excellence training session with City Care
managers.
Our expansion of the pre-apprentice
programme to Tauranga in 2005 was
extremely successful with a 100%
completion rate. Of the 10 young people
who completed the programme in 2005, five
were taken on by City Care as employees on
either our water and waste or parks contract;
two were employed by our partners Fulton
Hogan in their drainage and sealing
divisions; one went to Australia and is
working in a related area; one has returned
to Polytech to further his qualifications and
another has secured a position with a local
motor dealer as a trainee mechanic. Not one
has returned to the unemployment benefit!
The programme also continued to prove its
worth in Christchurch with the 2005 intake
of pre-apprentices yielding 14 motivated
young people who were offered permanent
positions with City Care as apprentices
in a range of areas from traffic management
to plumbing.
2006 marks the fourth year of the
programme and we look forward to
reporting on the success of this year's 11
recruits in Tauranga and 23 in Christchurch
in next year's report.
City Care wins Best Practice Award
On 31 August at the 2005 Roading New Zealand Excellence Awards, City Care was presented with the Infratrain NZ Best Practice
Award for our pre-apprentice work skills programme. This was one of only two awards handed out on the night. The judges' comments
were as follows:
"The judges considered this project to be an outstanding example of exceeding best practice and achieving results with far reaching
benefits to the industry and the community as a whole.
City Care are commended for their vision, professionalism in implementing such a radical scheme and their contribution to a wider
social and community problem.
The results speak for themselves - success in every respect. Their partnership with other contractors; social service providers and
technical institutes has been a major factor in the success of the project. The industry and society as a whole will undoubtedly benefit
from this initiative. It shows an unselfish commitment to the life blood of our industry its human resource."
s C h O O l pa rt n e r s h i p s
p r e - a p p r e n t i C e
p r O g r a m m e
