Graduates and Students

Students

We believe that it is important to share our knowledge and expertise with students to build a skilled workforce. We provide a wide variety of student placement opportunities across our services and programs including:  

• Speech pathology
• Social work
• Occupational therapy
• Early childhood teaching
• Community participation placements (where opportunities exist)
• Psychology
• Positive behaviour support
• Human service/ child and family

Student placements: The Benevolent Society works directly with Universities and Vocational providers to provide student placements across NSW, SA and QLD. We are unable to accept individual enquiries and recommend your placement provider get in touch here: Student Placements.

Graduate Career Opportunities

We employ people who have recently graduated throughout the year in all our services. We typically have career opportunities for people who have completed degrees in the following fields:

• Speech pathology
• Social work
• Occupational therapy
• Early childhood education (Queensland)
• Physiotherapy
• Psychology

The Benevolent Society is passionate about providing career paths for people who have an interest in developing their careers in the Community Services Sector and offer training and onboarding support aimed at transferring the knowledge and skills gained as part of your tertiary learning into your professional practice in the workplace. That is why we invest additional time and resources into supporting new graduates become the best clinicians they can be.

The Graduate Pathways Program

Graduate Pathways is the start of your journey with The Benevolent Society and is designed to provide you, new graduates, an experience that meets you where you are at in your level of learning, in an exciting and diverse environment. The program creates a nurturing community and supports your learning and development on various levels. The aim of the program is to build a strong, competent, and confident workforce to deliver high quality services to the clients of The Benevolent Society.

We do this by offering high quality support, a thorough induction period, ongoing learning opportunities and mini rotations exposing new graduates to different ways of working, disciplines and programs in The Benevolent Society.

We provide high quality supervision to all our staff and for new graduates we increase the hours of managerial and clinical supervision available to you. Every new graduate has access to weekly formal Supervision and ongoing informal support from your leaders and senior clinicians. We also set you up with a buddy, a friend-at-work, to support you as you establish your clinical practice.

We have structured monthly professional development and regular additional training to meet your needs. We know that your degree cannot teach you everything about your profession and that the sector is always changing and responding to new research. To keep up, we have monthly workshops with senior clinicians or practitioners. We also engage internal and external training when we need it.

Finally, regarding your case load, we slow things down. In Disability Services we provide service to people under the NDIS and that means working in a “billable environment”. Essentially it equates to staff having a target number of hours they need to bill for each day or week. In our ageing or child and family services, rather than an hourly expectation, programs generally have a minimum and maximum number of clients or families allocated to each practitioner. Our new graduates build up their caseloads gradually over time in a structured way that enables you to plan, consult with seniors and research, so you provide participants with the best service. 

Hear more about our Graduate Program from The Benevolent Society service leaders below!

Your pathways journey summarised

The program allows you to grow your skills and confidence with on the job and formal training, professional development, working within a professional governance framework and communities of practice with your peers. 

Other Benefits 

Training and Professional Development: The learning opportunities are endless. Our Practice Impact Management (PIM) team aims to offer a variety of learning opportunities for you to tap into including practice workshops, formal training, and other options.

Communities of Practice with your peers: You will also have the opportunity to connect with a Community of Practice (a group of Practitioners, Specialists, Clinicians, Therapists, Students and Student Supervisors) that share any area of interest and connects regularly to develop and Training and professional development. 

Professional Governance Framework: We have our own framework for all employees to adopt, which is aimed to support the work we do every day and to ensure our services are person-centred, connected, effective, and safe. This is available for all employees to adopt.

The Benevolent Society Graduate Program is an annual program for students who have recently graduated from university, specialising in allied health and can work across disability, child youth and family and aged care services.

The Graduate program is an opportunity for the future staff at The Benevolent Society to be supported through learning, training, and development as they start their career journey as a practitioner.

The focus for 2024 has been building the workforce in the disability, aged care and child youth and family sectors, bringing in early-career clinicians to meet the growing demand for quality care. 

This year’s cohort of 32 graduates (above) from across South Australia and New South Wales spent their Orientation Week at our Hurstville office, learning about the organisation, meeting leaders, exploring their roles, and connecting with fellow trainees.

Now in it’s second year, the program provides ongoing support through regular check ins every three months, site visits, networking events, workshops, and specific training to prepare them for their upcoming year in the workforce. 

Testimonials from previous graduates

Anna (below) joined The Benevolent Society's Graduate Pathways Program in early 2023 with a passion to make a difference in people's lives. Anna identifies as a non-binary (they/them) and feeling supported within the Graduate Pathways Program was essential to them to feel safe, welcomed, and a valued part of the team.

Kiah (below), an OT who came to The Benevolent Society as a uni placement

Rose (below), a Speech Pathologist who came to The Benevolent Society as a uni placement