To celebrate the launch of FuturU’s new End-Point Assessment (EPA) standards, we sat down with Amanda Cornish, Quality Manager, to learn a little more about what this development means for our training partners and learners. We also delve into Amanda’s extensive background in healthcare, and learn what motivates her every day.
Can you tell us about the new end-point assessment standards that we’ve recently introduced?
We’re really excited to expand our portfolio to offer the Team Leader or Supervisor Level 3 and Business Administrator Level 3 standards for team leaders/supervisors and business administrators. These standards are diverse and applicable across all sectors, not just healthcare, but complement the healthcare-specific assessments we already do.
But we’re not stopping here. We plan to continue expanding to offer an even wider range of EPA assessments to learners in healthcare and beyond. It’s a natural progression for us – we have a great deal of knowledge, skills and expertise within the team which stretches beyond healthcare, and the assessment methods are very similar.
There’s a lot happening in the background too – we’re working with the wider FuturU team to develop our situational judgement and knowledge tests, so that we can draw out really specific information on where our learners are passing and failing to ensure our assessments are at the right level. We’ve also recently introduced the EPA Pro admin platform to help streamline our EPA delivery and better support both our training partners and learners.
Can you tell us a little bit about your role at FuturU?
I’m the Quality Manager here. So I manage the Quality Team within the end-point assessment service, and work closely with the LIQA’s, IQA’s and assessors actually delivering the EPAs. I’m also the Centre Manager for the delivery of the Scottish Qualification Authority (SQA) qualifications.
How did you get into this field of work?
I’ve always worked in healthcare. I started at 18 working in psychiatric hospital environments and with people with learning difficulties, and did lots of qualifications, including a social work qualification. I’ve primarily worked with adults with learning disabilities and people with behaviour that may challenge. I’ve worked in and managed those services, I’ve managed a training department, and was a development manager for quality for many years. I’ve also been an assessor myself, before becoming an IQA (Internal Quality Assurance) and LIQA (Lead internal Quality assessor ). I’m the kind of person that likes to do lots of different things, if you couldn’t tell!
What motivates you to do a great job every day?
For me, it’s all about providing quality services – that’s really the most important thing. To be the best we can, to deliver the best service we can, that’s always been what’s driven me.
We ensure the quality of our EPAs here through standardised processes. Expectations are set from the outset by the assessment plans, which are developed by IFATE. We follow these plans to the letter – they tell us exactly what we need to do and how to do it.
All of our team are experts in assessing, but they’re also experts in the domain that they’re assessing. Of course that means we have a lot of healthcare experts, but with our new standards we have some experts working in project management, team leading and business administration roles. We employ staff with the right knowledge, skills and behaviours to assess people at the right level and to also make judgements on people’s practice based on those levels.
What brings you joy at work?
I’m a real people person. Nothing is ever too much trouble for my team, they’re always absolutely keen to help and get stuck in. We think outside the box and do everything we can to ensure we’re giving the absolute best quality service that we can and I love that that never changes.
When it gets very busy I do get involved with actually delivering assessments too. There’s so many wonderful stories – we work with such a diverse group of learners. One that’s stuck in my mind is somebody who was doing Level 5 Leader in Care. She was fantastic but really lacked confidence in the beginning. But doing the apprenticeship really helped her, she really embraced the training, and truly put the people she provided a service to at the centre of their care and it was just fantastic to see.
What excites you most about the future of FuturU?
We’re developing universal free access to healthcare education to anyone that wants it – how wonderful is that? If I can say in years to come that I worked for a company that kickstarted that vision and made that a possibility for anyone wanting to work as a nurse, a carer, without having to fall into debt they can’t pay off, I think that’s an absolutely wonderful thing to be a part of.
Find out more about our End-Point Assessments and get in touch with the team →
