One popular destination on civvy street for personnel leaving the Armed Forces, or other defence services, is the construction industry. However, keeping your boots polished won't be necessary on a skills training course - just steel tipped! Being physically fit for some of the more demanding challenges of the building or plumbing industry is a of course, an advantage, plus understanding of what its takes to be hands-on whilst solving practical problems at the same time.
Many service personnel are keen to develop their career path by taking a series of training courses that naturally follow each other from an entry level multiskills course to embarking on the City and Guilds NVQ route to advanced level in their chosen trade skill. The Enhanced Learning Credits Scheme (ELC) provides financial support to eligible Service personnel who wish to enhance their educational or vocational achievements at Level 3 or above. Service Leavers can use their Individual Resettlement Training Cost (IRTC) grant in connection with Enhanced Learning Credit (ELC) to pay for the same higher level qualification courses.
AbleSkills make considerable effort to fit in with the requirements of resettlement training allowances in an attempt to ensure service leavers have a chance to retrain and have somewhere comfortable to stay.
Sometimes the resettlement process can be lengthy and complicated but AbleSkills have staff in place to guide and help you and try to make the whole transaction - which is available to all servicemen and women - as smooth as possible. The first job will be to deal with your MOD Form 1746, when you arrive. In fact, a number of staff are ex-servicemen themselves and have also taught within the services! They are also Assessors and Internal verifiers and this ensures that the standard of training provided will put you 'on the front line' of skilled trade personnel!
Time allocations are no problem either - whether you have 20 days or 35 - there a variety of course options with different durations, even weekend training to get you 'fighting fit' for life outside the MOD !