The St Monica Trust Practice Development team all have extensive experience in the social care sector as a foundation for their progression to highly skilled trainers and assessors. Each one is sensitive to the specific challenges facing employees in this sector, is clear about delivering training programmes that are relevant and can call on a wide breadth of knowledge and personal experience. They provide a high degree of personal support to candidates, identifying individual needs and tailoring their approach to support.

Jacqui Ramus – Practice Development Manager
Winner of the Laing & Buisson Independent Health Care Award for 'Excellence in Training' 2008 and winner of the Care Choices Care Training Assessor of the Year 2005
Jacqui’s experience and dedication in social care, training and development over the last 20 years is nationally recognised. A trained social worker, she had first hand experience in managing residential care homes before devoting the past ten years to her career as a trainer, NVQ Assessor, Internal Verifier and NVQ Assessment Manager.

Totally committed to training as fundamental to personal and professional development, Jacqui has recently achieved an MSc. in Occupational Psychology. She has already attained a Preliminary Certificate in Social Care; BSc (Honours) in Psychology; Certificate in Management Studies; NVQ Level 4 in Training and Development; NVQ Assessor Award; Internal Verifier Award; Manual Handling Trainer’s qualification, First Aid at Work qualification, Dementia Care Mapping and Psychometric Testing level A/B.

Jacqui is Chair of ACTAN (the Association of Care Training and Assessment Networks) a national network of care trainers and NVQ assessors; she is the St Monica Trust representative for the Care Learning forum, and has a seat on both the Skills for Care (South West) Regional Committee, and the national Skills for Care Standards, Qualifications, Education and Training sub-committee. She shares her significant knowledge of the care sector with all NVQ candidates and course participants.

Her achievement at the St Monica Trust has been to nurture a training environment that is both stimulating and relevant to today’s care services.

Becky Cooper – Practice Development Officer
Becky Cooper’s career in the care sector began in 1990 when she worked as a carer with adults with learning disabilities, some of whom presented with behaviour that challenged. She quickly progressed to manage a number of different homes and a day service. Becky qualified as an NVQ Assessor in 1997 and began co-ordinating NVQs in 2000. Since then Becky has been involved in assessing and internally verifying NVQ levels 2, 3, and 4 and the Learning Disability Award Framework. She holds a First Aid Trainer’s Certificate and has recently completed a trainer’s course in “Behaviour that challenges”. She has NVQ Level 3 training and development, NVQ Assessor Award, Internal Verifier Award and NVQ Level 4 in Management.