OSIRIS COLLEGE FAQs

Currently, (2011 to further notice) Osiris College is ONLY offering "buy a place" training places on demand given sufficient expressions of interest from groups of individuals led by an individual wishing to commission us. In other words, there are no such courses available off the shelf unless a person representing at least a group of 6 people (can be up to twenty people) undertakes to arrange a venue and commission our training and undertakes to be responsible for the payment of our fees.

All our other services remain fully available including commissioned in training by Local Authorities.

Listed on this page are a series of FAQs about Osiris College training.

1) Where is Osiris College Training delivered?

All our courses are delivered at a venue in Dagenham in Essex.  It has very good transport links. It is just off the A13 London to Southend trunk road and thus has good links to the London A406 Ring Road, the M25 and Dartford Thames crossing. The venue is easily accessible by car and is walkable for the able-bodied from Becontree underground station (District Line) in about 20 to 25 minutes of easy-paced walking. The venue does have full disabled access. Food is available on site to purchase but all our courses include a buffet lunch, tea / coffee and biscuits and a supply of fruit juice.  A map and venue details is sent to all course participants following course booking. For those travelling from further afield we have a comprehensive listing of local Hotel B&B accommodation available upon request. Parking can be limited within the venue grounds but it is possible to park in the side roads or park in a large Leisure Centre car park close by. Neither we nor the venue proprietors can take responsibility for your car when it is parked within the venue grounds or without.

2) Is Osiris College going to offer training in other parts of the country?

To be honest, it is very unlikely, but we will always keep this matter under review. We are a small company who don't have ancillary staff to help us organise things. It is hard enough checking and organising venues and so on when these things are close by and we just don't see it as practicable for us to put on Osiris College courses in distant locations where we can't easily visit and look things over. Of course, as Osiris Training, we travel all over the country working for various Local Authorities, so if a sufficiently sized group of people (really a minimum of 6 but 8 or more is better still) wanted to organise an event (lay on a suitable venue etc) we would be happy to do the training for you for an agreed fee. If you choose the latter option we would need a named person to take responsibility for organisation and payment of fees etc.

3) In previous incarnations of your main website, you mentioned the idea of "Distance Learning" - is this happening?

This project is still "in progress".  The intention is to bring some "Distance Learning" courses into fruition over the course of the next several months. The first is likely to be an "Introduction to Child Protection" course. However, we do believe that there is no real substitute for face-to-face training and especially where skills-based learning is concerned. Yes, you can get the knowledge from a Distance Learning course but it is not and can't be experiential, especially in terms of exploring your attitudes and value-base with others. But until the Osiris College Distance Learning courses become available. there are lots of very good books out there on all the subjects we train on (see our Bibliography pages) and we urge you to read up on your chosen subject area and then pick a suitable training course where you can meet others to test and exchange your ideas. The task is then to acquire and put knowledge-based skills into practice by "doing it" via various exercises in a controlled training environment.

4) Are Osiris College courses accredited?

In a time yet to come, eventually the UK College of Social Work may get round to offering accreditation for short course social care training. However, and in the meantime, Osiris Training & Consultancy / Osiris College is a member organisation of The Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Certification Service and our courses are accredited (or undergoing accreditation) as CPD certified. Osiris is also a registered Learning Provider with the UK Register of Learning Providers. Our courses are, wherever relevant, generally linked to the Every Child Matters "Common Core" set of knowledge and competencies.

Furthermore, and more importantly, the people training you have been in this line of work for a very long time and are very well qualified in their subjects. Please see Directors pages in our main website FAQs section.

5) Do I get a Certificate?

Upon course completion, you will receive a Course Certificate listing the course learning objectives, the number of course hours and overleaf will be a Continuing Professional Development format to enable you to use (if you wish) the Certificate to record the application of your learning to your practice.

6) What is the procedure for Booking a place?

First peruse the Course Calendar and see whether we are running the sort of training course you wish to attend. If we are not, please email us and at least register with us what you'd like to attend and in that way we can rethink our course programme. Check the course details to see whether the course will meet your training needs and that the available date(s) suits you. And then check the course fees. Please make sure you read our Terms & Conditions before you do anything else. If all is ok, then click on the Booking Form link and make your booking.

What will happen after we receive your Booking Form is that we will send you a PayPal Invoice via email. When you click on the link in your PayPal Invoice you are taken to PayPal's secure servers (you will see the padlock sign in the corner of your browser and "https" rather than "http" in your Browser address bar) where you can pay via credit or debit card. You do not pay through this website at all. And you do not have to "join up" to PayPal in order to pay. This is a secure way of paying. Nevertheless, we would always advise the use of a credit card rather than debit card when paying online. 

If you would prefer to pay by cheque please let us know and we will send an Invoice to the address you specify.

If you are the representative of a Local Authority training department or training representative of an organisation that would prefer to pay via BACS procedure, then please let us know and we will send an Invoice to your specified organisation address complete with our BACS details. 

We are sorry but we cannot process any payments over the telephone and have no plans to do so.

Following payment, we will send confirmation details including course outline and programme (as shown on the Osiris College course details pages) and venue details and maps. If you require B&B accommodation please let us know and we can send you a list of Hotels within easy car travelling distance.

7) What is "block booking"?

Put simply, it is a way of saving you money if you book as a group. A "block book" is any grouping of two or more. Please contact us to discuss your needs if you wish to book as a group.

8) Cancellation Policy & Terms and Conditions

It is very important that all Osiris College customers read our Terms & Conditions and which includes details about our Cancellation Policy and our Money Back Guarantee (see point 14 below). You should also read our Privacy Policy regarding your information.

9) Who are Osiris College courses for?

Our training is intended for anyone who has a deep commitment to working with people, be they children, young people or adults and who wants to improve their knowledge and skills in undertaking their work or just wants to improve their set of "life skills".

For example, a course such as "Child Protection Awareness" (level 1) is certainly suitable for anyone who has regular contact with children and / or needs to know the basics of child protection. For some of our courses, we anticipate that our customers will likely be already working in social care or with people (including children and young people) either as unqualified or qualified workers. A few of our courses are "in depth" and may prove rather a challenge for non-social care staff but that doesn't rule out people who have experience of working closely with children and adults and who feel they are "up for it".  Some training (such as the Attachment for Practice course) is in considerable depth. If you are willing to learn then everything we teach should be within your grasp. In any case, it is our job to get the message over to you in a way that you understand and our failure if we do not.

If you are unsure about your suitability for a course please contact us to discuss.

The informational content of our training is very high. Indeed, it is a self-criticism of ours that we usually try to pack too much in. We have been ourselves on training where content has been thin and the training feels as if it has been "padded out". We promise you won't experience that on our courses. We expect you to work hard and to fully engage in the day(s) and to ask us questions, questions, questions. We want you to feel that you have got your money's worth and we want you to go away convinced that you have got a better deal from having been on our training.

10) What is the format for the training day?

All Osiris College courses require you to be present at 9.15am for Registration and Tea / Coffee. The course starts at 9.30am with Introductions, our Groundrules and Domestics details. We have tea breaks for 15 minutes at 11am and again at 3pm in the afternoon. Fruit juice and spring water is also provided. A buffet lunch is available and we usually take this for a hour at 12.45pm. The day will usually end at 4.30pm but may run a little over at times. Please be prepared to stay until 5pm! Throughout the day there are interspersed presentations using powerpoint and flipcharts with small group exercises of various sorts and main group discussions. On some courses there are short DVD videos. We always encourage questions either within the main group (where appropriate) or catch us (for more private discussion) at breaks or over lunch. All courses come with full handout packs.

If you are running late then come in as soon as you can but remember our training is packed and intensive and we can't delay the start time.

11) Why aren't your courses cheaper?

Osiris College fees are very competitively priced. The same title training (even where it is available) will often cost substantially more elsewhere. You are welcome to check on the web that what we say is true. Our ethos has always been that the service user (or client) comes first and we are in the training business to help ensure that the service user ultimately gets a good deal from the people we train. It is the venue cost which usually drives the price of training up more than anything else. We could put our courses on at a fancy Hotel venue which would be very nice but it has to be paid for. We prefer to try and keep costs down whilst still providing a comfortable training experience.

On a secondary note, we confidently believe that you will get substantially more "added value" from our training that many of our competitors because of our extensive background knowledge and experience, not simply in terms of the direct training but in the many years of frontline work which is behind us and which we inevitably share with you within the training. 

12) How often are your courses revised?

All the time is the answer. No course we ever train is exactly like the last one. Every group sparks off different debates and our knowledge and experience base is so extensive that we will respond uniquely to questions each time. We constantly add new material which is forever a problem for us as our courses seem to expand and expand and it is always a question of what to leave out.

13) Is your course list complete or will you add more options?

We would like you to tell us what you want by emailing us your requirements. But no, the list isn't complete and we will add options as time goes by and courses that don't attract custom will likewise be dropped.

14) What if I don't like the course and want my money back?

No problem, but the detail of the answer to your question is contained within our Terms & Conditions  point 6.3 and in relation to our Money Back Guarantee. We only want satisfied customers.

15) There are some questions I'd like to ask - how can I do that?

Easy - just send us an email: osiriscollege@osiris-training.co.uk for anything to do with Osiris College. If you are enquiring about commissioning Osiris Training & Consultancy courses, or anything else, then email us on: info@osiris-training.co.uk.

You can leave a telephone enquiry on: 0208 470 8404 (ansaphone) and we will reply as soon as we can but email is the better option.

 OSIRIS: Lighting the Way Forward
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Copyright since 1999 and ongoing to Osiris Training & Consultancy Ltd. Site first published 1999