Simon Community NI

Life-saving training that helps Simon Community NI to tackle homelessness.

A new home for a charity’s training programmes

Simon Community NI is a charity working to end homelessness by supporting people in Belfast and throughout Northern Ireland who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless.

Given Simon Community NI’s incredible work in our local community, we first began working together through our charity partnership. That close relationship led to Simon Community NI realising that our partnership could extend beyond charitable support and that we could impact the training it delivers to its staff and volunteers.

At that stage, training was being coordinated and delivered centrally. It was managed using spreadsheets, and records were kept in multiple places. The disparate nature of how training was managed and delivered meant that training content varied in quality.

Simon Community NI was keen to introduce a learning management system that would bring consistency to all aspects of its training. It needed to achieve:

• A single hub for all training data and records
• Tracking and reporting of training completion 
• A more engaging way of delivering training

Essential training for life and death situations

Based on recommendations from industry colleagues and our advice, Simon Community NI was keen to use Moodle LMS as its learning management system. The platform provides all of the features and functionality the charity needs, and also offers great value.

We’ve helped Simon Community NI to bring everything related to its training into one place, where it can easily be accessed, managed and delivered.

The new LMS creates far more engaging learning experiences. All courses offer a consistent look and feel, as well as a more consistent standard of learning. Training is now interactive, with a range of multimedia content available to engage learners.

Some learning will continue to be delivered centrally via face-to-face training. The new platform also gives Simon Community NI the tools to manage blended learning so that classroom learning remains a cohesive part of the learning experience when needed.

Moodle LMS’s reporting system gives Simon Community NI access to a wealth of valuable information on course completions. This is particularly important for governance around statutory and mandatory training that employees and volunteers need to complete.

This includes crucial refresher safeguarding training that covers team members’ interactions with vulnerable clients. Similarly, the LMS delivers refresher training on administering naloxone, a medication that reverses the effects of overdoses. It’s in those highly pressured situations that the benefits of consistent, high-quality and engaging refresher training are most obvious.

Simon Community NI can now easily and quickly track completions, and flag any team members who have outstanding training or are due to complete refresher courses. This makes monitoring and maintaining compliance levels a far more streamlined process.

Huge time-saving benefits

Simon Community NI’s new Moodle LMS gives the charity the consistency and efficiency needed to improve the management of all aspects of its training programmes. Training can now be completed remotely and on any device.

This has created not only a much more engaging way to deliver vital training but also saved huge amounts of time that would have otherwise been spent on updating spreadsheets and records.

The result is a platform that encourages team members to readily access the training available rather than having to be forced to use it. Given the life-saving potential of some of that training, this is a huge benefit for Simon Community NI, its employees and volunteers, and vulnerable people across Northern Ireland.

“The team at Synergy Learning have been superb at answering any questions or queries we’ve had and giving us the assistance we need. The relationship to date has been exceptional — very supportive and we’ve been really impressed.”

Andrea McCooke, Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development 

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