The Learning Curve at the Argos Contact Centre in Widnes has been one of the most successful learning centres within the network run by the Usdaw Lifelong Learning Project. But what happens when the centre can’t open because of Covid-19? ULRs Michelle Whitley and Kerry Dunning explain how they have continued to support their learners during lockdown.

How has the Argos Contact Centre been operating during lockdown?

Michelle: There’s a skeleton crew onsite. Normally, there’s 200 people onsite at any one time but it’s gone from a full room, which would hold around 100 people, to something like 20 – everybody else went to home working. We’ve had a few people shielding, no furloughs, and for the rest, the business went out and bought laptops and sent everybody home, which was good.

How did it feel to have to close The Learning Curve?

Kerry: At the point when lockdown commenced, a lot of people were stressing about being in close proximity because at the time we didn’t have as much information and obviously the room is quite small. I think it was the best decision so they didn’t need to be put through coming up to the learning centre to contact us because we could be available in other ways. Normally, we have drop-ins constantly. People can book appointments as well and we will stop people coming in when there’s an exam on or a meeting. But when there’s nothing going on, it’s an open door, people can just pop in – and because we’re at the back of the canteen, we get a lot of footfall, which is a good position to be in usually. The canteen has been closed up to now, although it is starting to slowly open again where people can sit in there now.

Michelle: We’ve been operating for more than 10 years and we’ve only had to close the doors once in that time, when the ULR who was running it had to go back on the phones for some reason. We went berserk because we had to close for half a day back then – and now we’ve been closed for months!

What have you found works best to stay in touch with learners when most of them are working from home?

Michelle: Definitely email. We already had a distribution list for all our members with their email addresses so we’ve sent out emails about everything we’re doing and all the courses that we’ve got on offer. We also use Facebook, which we haven’t used that much for a few years, so we re-did our Facebook page and put loads of different opportunities on there that we offered not just to learners but to their families as well. We also use Yammer, the social network that the business use.

Did you have to change your delivery model for lockdown?

Michelle: We were really lucky because we spent the whole year before this setting up remote learning as well so everything we did apart from assessments was distance learning – we don’t have anything you actually have to come in for apart from maths and English. We made the switch because there are people working on weekday evenings and at the weekends when we wouldn’t normally be open, to make sure as many people as possible had the chance to take one of our courses. Both Kerry and myself are qualified functional skills assessors, so anybody who’s going to do an apprenticeship or anyone doing an apprenticeship who needs extra help are sent to us and we tutor them in maths and English – so we’ve had to change that to tutorials over video-conferencing software.

How did you come to support learners at the Argos site in Acton Gate as well?

Kerry: We’ve been helping Acton Gate in Stafford because Jackie, the coordinator there, has been shielding and Carol, the ULR, had to go back to the frontline, so we’ve been running both centres remotely – although they’re both back now.

Michelle: We jumped in and said, ‘We’ll run both sites’ because we originally helped set up the site and we had a website for them as well. So everything we did for us, we mirrored for Acton Gate.

Kerry: Without Michelle’s insight into making all our workbooks and enquiry forms into Google documents, and her persistence in learning how to add links to images for our emails, I don’t think we would have been able to support our other site as easily or had many responses at all. She has also made it so much easier to catch equality and diversity data remotely on both sites, which is one of our criteria for Usdaw.

What’s take-up been like since lockdown?

Kerry: It was so bizarre at first. We were so busy before lockdown and then suddenly nothing. But it’s picking up again now. Our Mental Health First Aiders – we probably have 80 altogether on both sites – they’ve been asking for more help and we’ve managed to get a Level 2 course in Mental Health First Aid and advocacy in the workplace through Warrington College for Widnes and North Warwickshire College for Acton Gate. I sent out the email about it to all Mental Health First Aiders and champions and within 24 hours, six people signed up in Widnes and about the same at Acton Gate.

Michelle: As well as the main Learning Curve website, we have built separate websites for literacy and numeracy learning and we’ve just made an out-of hours website for stores and distribution centres. As soon as we put that up, we got people come through to do courses. All our websites now let learners enrol directly on courses: you click on the link, read about the course and at the bottom you can enrol – it takes them straight to a nationwide provider.

What have learners told you about the benefits of learning in lockdown?

Michelle: One lady lost her father during lockdown and was having a really bad time with it. I saw her one time when I nipped into the centre and she said, ‘Please send me some courses because it’s really going to help my mental health’. So we sent her some short courses on different things and she says it’s really helped to keep her going during that really bad time for her.

How are you working with the Royal Literary Fund (RLF)?

Michelle: We’re doing a project with RLF, where Clare Shaw and Mary Colson are encouraging members to write about their experiences during lockdown. Clare and Mary are awesome: we love it when we get to talk to them – they are so uplifting! Clare made a video about how to write a poem, talking about all the little tricks you can use, which is really good. I tried it myself and I promised them both I would put it on Yammer to show people, ‘Yes – you can do it’.

What’s been the biggest challenge for you during lockdown?

Kerry: If I had to go on the floor to do some printing, I could be gone for two hours because I would get stopped constantly and asked about courses or support – that was my job – that was me, I was always interacting with people. The weeks of being at home and being isolated were really affecting me, so I made the decision to go in for a couple of hours a couple of times a week just to get a bit of normality back – and that’s massively helped me.

While you’ve been supporting learners, who has been supporting you?

Kerry: We’ve been having weekly catch-ups with the North West Project Workers Julia Baldwin and Jonathan Charnock-Bradshaw, and with Neil Chapman, who’s the project worker who covers Acton Gate, and Jackie and Carol now they’re back. We’ve had a lot of support – Jonathan’s at the end of the phone, he always answers or gets back to us straight away. And me and Michelle have a really good relationship – we’re in touch every day and we tend to be a shoulder to moan on for each other when we need that!

What are you proudest of about what you’ve been able to do over lockdown?

Kerry: The fact that we’ve been given the opportunity to carry on our work and that’s down to the business as well as having the support from Usdaw because without all that it would have been awful! And the fact that we’ve still been available for anybody who needs us for advice or support or just to have a moan – we still have been available to the learners. So we just need to learn from what we’ve gone through so we’ll be more prepared in the future and be able to use what we’ve learned and move forward.

This blog first appeared in the Autumn 2020 edition of the Learning Rep, where you can also read Michelle's poem.