A nationwide nursery group which specialises in giving military personnel high quality, trusted care for their children has appointed Realise as its new training provider.

RAFAKidz, which has 17 nursery and three out of school club settings based on or around RAF and MOD stations, will utilise Realise – the leading provider of early years training provider in the UK – for apprenticeship delivery and other training requirements.

Amongst the locations for the RAFAKidz settings are RAF Brize Norton, High Wycombe, Cosford and MOD Boscombe Down.

RAFAKidz was formed in 2019 to help the Royal Air Force overcome a wide range of childcare issues which were impacting negatively on the serving RAF community. The settings are also open to civilian families living in the local area.

Pamela Cave, Operations Manager for RAFAKidz, said appointing Realise was a key milestone in its growth plans, as well as its recruitment and retention strategies.

She said: “We have come a long way in the five years since we were formed and, now we have grown to a total of 20 settings with 375 staff, it was vital that we had a consistent training provision in place.

“We have previously used multiple local providers but felt it was important we uniformed approach to our training and apprenticeship delivery.

“We were extremely impressed by Realise. Their team have great experience of working in the early years sector so they know all the benefits and challenges and build those into the curriculums.

“There is also a clear passion for maximising the potential for each learner in the best way possible for that individual which was really important for us.

“We have a growing number of learners who are taking apprenticeships and we will have people working at Levels 2, 3 and 5. Our partnership with Realise will be crucial in not only helping new recruits to join RAFAKidz but also retaining staff with exciting career development opportunities.”

Realise works with more than 1,000 early years settings on their training provision, supporting almost 2,000 learners.

Karen Derbyshire, Operations Director for Early Years at Realise, said: “We are delighted to have teamed up with RAFAKidz which is a unique and exciting model to be involved with.

“We are working closely with the RAFAKidz team to develop curriculums that meet the needs of the specific requirements of their learners.

“Ultimately, our main aim is to produce fantastic early years practitioners for RAFAKidz, whether that be introducing new people to the sector or adding to the skills, knowledge and experience of existing staff members.”

For more information about Realise, visit www.realisetraining.com