DD will leave school in the summer. She doesn't want to do 6th form/college. She's clever but not academic. Instead she wants to work in an outdoor adventure centre - she sees this as a future career, not just a bit of fun -and has some voluntary work lined up at a local centre, but it seems they can't offer her a job until she's 18 as she'll be supervising chilldren so needs to be 18 for that. They don't do appenticeships.
So it looks like DD will be doing outdoorsy voluntary work until she's 18. There's no colleges near us that do any outdoor adventure BTECs or anything else remotely interesting to her.
A friend told me that my DD won't be allowed to "just do voluntary" as she has to be in some sort of education. Not sure how she'll be found out, perhaps the undercover zipwire police will spot her
I am concerned about her having no income as she's not conforming by staying on in education and I'm finding it hard to get any information about what entitlements she'll have, to benefits, if any. Bit of a worry really and school/careers haven't been that helpful - just wanting to pigeon hole her into 6th form or college which she has no interest in.
AIBU to hope there's someone around who knows about this stuff?
AIBU?
To think DD aged 16 isn't going to have any income when she leaves school because she doesn't fit neatly into one of the boxes?
MarthaEntwhistle · 09/01/2013 00:13
There are definitely careers and further education courses in outdoor education. (We tease my DH that he has a degree in tying knots as this is what he did) but you are right in that those courses might not kick in until the age of 18. In the mean time DD needs to look at what qualifications the outdoor adventure centres are looking for in order for her to have an actual career there. They are likely to want some relavant qualifications regardless of whether she has voluteered there or not. Has she previously done DoE or any other organised outdoor things where qualified instructors could point her in the right direction?
With the introduction of the new rules that teenagers need to be in fulll time education for longer, lots of collages are responding with more vocational qualifications that, while not exactly tailored to your DDs needs might help her to get onto the courses she needs at 18 in order to do what she wants to do in the future. Try to get her to be open minded in what she is doing at the moment and look at it as a stepping stone. She could probably do a vocational college course and continue to do some voluteering work. With the right backing and determination she can get where she wants to be. I love when young people have a determination and know where they want to go (I work with so many who don't care 
)
If this is really what she wants to do, then she needs to suck it up and sort something educational out for the next two years whilst working towards gaining a degree place. I'm not sure who's doing it now, but in my day it was Liverpool for outdoor ed. she should already be pursuing d of e and expedition work (tick off gold, and get some service projects under her belt with kids - try cubs or similar) and getting as much experience, first aid certification (she's old enough to have adult certs) and building up as much in her log books as she possibly can.
Back in the day, YTS used to be a really good way to do this stuff, but unless you have a particular aptitude and are junior kayaking champ or whatever, these days the only way in is graft. If she wants a cheap way into this stuff, she's better off building her way towards a degree course anyway - tons of opportunities for rock quals, as well as ad hoc mountaineering stuff.
How does her log book look? She needs to have it ready so that at 18 she can book onto her ml summer and start working through those.
Either that or she just needs to join the military as a pti. 
Unless she has some bloody good contacts, she's going to have to have a better plan than 'a bit of volunteering' with the hope it's going to lead to paid employment in the outdoor pursuits industry. If she gets to 18 in education, she can apply for bunch work permits and fetch up in ski in the winter/ climb in the summer/ hiking type resort as a student. But really, employers are going to want to see some effort towards qualifications.
(She'll need the swimming stuff anyway - I assumed she was already bronze medallion tbh. Later on, she'll need deep water rescue and instructional stuff. Not sure what it's like in the UK at the mo in terms of updated quals. We upped and left. To one of those ski in the winter, climb in the summer places. )
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