Your induction runs across your first four to six weeks and comes in three parts: how apprenticeships work, how yours works, and everything we need from you. Work through them in order, tick them off as you go, and your induction session at the end will be worth having.
Nothing ticked yet. Start with your handbook.
Parts one and two you read. Part three you complete, and it is the only part that is required before your induction session is booked. Your skills coach reads what you write before they meet you.
Eight cards covering the things that are true of every apprenticeship: your training plan, your off-the-job hours, your rights, how reviews work, English and maths, and what happens at the end. This is the part you will come back to when something is unclear.
Now the specifics. Fifteen months of safeguarding curriculum month by month, how it is shaped around your own workplace, and the NSPCC learning that sits alongside it. By the end of this part you should be able to say what you will be doing in month six.
The only part you have to complete. Your learning profile, your handbook, and one conversation with your manager about protected time. It takes about an hour in total and it is the part that decides whether your first session is any good.
Your skills coach reads your profile before they meet you, so the session is not a form-filling exercise. You agree your starting point, work through your questions, turn your support needs into something specific, and sign your training plan with your employer in the room.
We come back and ask whether it is genuinely happening. Has your training started? Is your protected time real? Does the job match what we were told? Are your adjustments working? Where the answer is no, the plan changes.
Induction only works if it reflects what is actually happening. If a step has not happened, or has happened on paper but not in practice, say so. It changes the plan rather than counting against you.
If the hours in your training plan are not being given, raise it at your next review or tell your skills coach before then. It is the single most common thing to go wrong, and the easiest to fix early.
If your role gives you little safeguarding responsibility in practice, we need to know in the first weeks. Your employer, your coach and TLC can change what you are given to do.
Health, access, confidence, workload, home. Tell us what would help. Support put in place at week three works better than support arranged at month nine.