Multiple Choice provides opportunities for people to progress and develp themselves and their skills, whether they be cients, volunteers, student placements or employees.

Since the beginning we have offered trainee drug worker roles as part of the core staff team. Criteria for people applying for these positions included personal past experience of drug use and engagement with services as an essential requirement. The idea was to begin to offer real employment opportunities to people who had experienced services from another perspective, and to make real the chances to progress from user of services to deliverer of services and beyond.

In the past two years we have been working with PATH Yorkshire (who provide training opportunities to Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) people from across Yorkshire) to improve opportunities for people who are currently under-represented in our workforce to gain access to employment within drug service provision.

So far, five of the seven people who have completed traineeships with Multiple Choice have gone on to secure paid employment with other drug serviceas in the city. We are determined to continue to offer these chances, and the funding secured from The Big Lottery Reaching Communities Volunteer Development Project includes a one year trainee post for a Volunteer Development Worker. This means that over the three years the Lottey project runs, three people who have exeprienced social exclusion, will also gain valuable skills and experience to ake them forward to full time employment.

The Volunteer Development Project itself offers additional opportunities for people to gain skills and experience in the Health and Social Care sector (see Volunteering page for more details), and the student placement scheme we have been running alongside Social Work courses at Bradford University and Bradford College offers student social workers the opportunity to experience a voluntary/community sector perspective to their training.