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Work experience placements for students

Stroud District Council has operated a structured work experience programme for almost 10 years, successfully placing over 50 students into work experience opportunities every year. The programme is based on the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) good practice model, and enables schools, colleges and employers to focus work experience on employability skills.

Find out what we do

Stroud District Council actively supports unpaid work placements throughout the year for school, college and university students; graduates; the unemployed and adults with learning and/or physical disabilities. Working in local government can be both challenging and rewarding.

The Council is one of the largest local employers and through our work experience programme we offer an introduction to working in a busy, professional environment as well as an understanding of the wide range of services we provide which affect every single person in our area:

  • we plan where houses, businesses and green spaces should be
  • we collect rubbish and recycling from over 50,000 properties
  • our Environmental Health team monitors pollution, we help people in rented accommodation, and look after food and health and safety
  • we provide sports centres and help people improve their health and wellbeing
  • our Community Safety team looks after elderly and vulnerable people and helps keep the district free from crime and antisocial behaviour
  • we rent out 5,000 council homes and are building new homes
  • we run the elections for MPs, your local council, the European Parliament and police and crime commissioners
  • we provide benefits services to help people on low incomes
  • we collect council tax to pay for the services we provide and policing, schools, social care and other public services.

All of these areas require support from other teams such as communications, policy making, human resources, IT, and the legal and finance teams.

Our work experience programme

Work experience is understood to be a crucial part of development and often a necessary part of a student's course work. Each person has their own reason for seeking work experience. For instance, it could be to gain:

  • employability skills and valuable workplace knowledge to enhance employment prospects
  • an insight into a future career
  • work confidence following an absence from the workplace.

Placements are tailored to suit individual skills and needs but we strive to offer all students the opportunity to:

  • take part in an induction seminar on their first morning, gaining an understanding of the many services Stroud District Council provides and challenging their thoughts on what working in local government is like
  • understand the main health and safety issues affecting employees in the workplace
  • undertake a psychometric survey to find out more about their natural skills and attributes and how this information can help in their career path
  • carry out relevant project work relating to the specific service area where they are placed
  • undertake a number of e learning courses and attain the relevant certificate for each.

Students are supervised by a workplace mentor throughout their placement period. We will always try to appoint students in a role appropriate to their interests and abilities and therefore encourage students to provide as much information as possible when completing the application form.

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