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Agender Sub-Groups
Children's Centre Sub-Group
Children’s Centres are part of the government’s intention to provide
co-ordinated, widespread and comprehensive services for young children and
families. One of Agender’s key objectives is to develop support centres
which combine family support such as childcare and health services with
advice about jobs, careers and training. This should be delivered by
advisers who are experts in higher level and non-traditional careers. The
Agender project aims to achieve this through its work with pilot children
centres. These are located in some of Birmingham’s most deprived areas
including Aston, Kingstanding, Saltley, Bartley Green, Washwood Heath and
Allens Croft. Recruitment to the majority of Agender’s taster courses and
programmes will be through Children’s Centres in order to target those
women with multiple barriers to training and employment.
Activity which has grown from discussion within the Children’s Centre
Sub-group includes;
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Personal
Development Training to be delivered across multiple Children’s
Centres in Birmingham. This aims to make the transition from inactivity
to training or employment easier through personal development and
identifying skills and aspirations offering non-traditional careers as
viable options.
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Barnado’s ‘Can
Do’ project, based at Bartley Green Children’s centre, aims to raise
women’s awareness of non-traditional careers whilst raising self-esteem
through personal development and challenging activities such as
abseiling and bricklaying.
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The Childcare
Information Bureau plan to employ a male recruitment worker who will
strive to recruit more men to care occupations.
The Children’s Centre Sub-group is chaired by Aggie Kent and Ray Goodwin.
Aggie is Community Involvement Development Co-ordinator at Surestart
Saltley and Ward End Children’s Centre and provides valuable input as a
representative of Children’s Centres. Ray is Funding and Development
Manager of Birmingham Settlement and has extensive experience of working
with voluntary and employment organisations.
Innovative Activity:
§ Individual Advancement Programme
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Employers Sub-Group
The Employers Sub-Group is chaired by Claire Hardwick, who is the Head of
Regeneration, Family Housing Association. Claire
has been involved in the Core and Sub-Group level of the Agender project,
as well as being the lead contact on several Agender linked projects and
has considerable experience in managing and developing multi agency, multi
sector partnerships.
The Employers Sub-Group consists of representatives from private and
public sector intermediary organisations as well as employers. Key
organisations involved in the Employer sub-group are JobcentrePlus,
Connexions, Birmingham & Solihull LSC, the Building Health Hub, the Family
Housing Association, the BBC and University of Central England. The mix of
representatives in this group brings An idea stemming from the Employers
Sub-Group, which has been piloted under the Agender project, is the women
only Film School Project. The project aimed to address the issue of job
segregation and gender pay inequality and worked with employers from the
media sector. It aimed to create a working ethos that offered support and
encouragement to women partaking in the Film School within a two week
part-time course. The project was a great success, with two participants
going on to complete placements with the BBC.
Innovative activity:
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Men into Childcare
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Film School 2
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DVD for employers
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Family Housing Association Women into Construction
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Training Sub-Group
The Training Sub-Group consists of representatives from Higher and Further
Education, as well as private sector bodies. By bringing together
educational and training organisations in this way, innovative project
ideas can be tabled and carried through as part of the Agender Pilot.
Through the development of tailored learning programmes, women can be
assisted into non-traditional jobs. Several of the programmes already
underway have stemmed from ideas presented at this Sub-Group. These
include construction tasters, a horticulture course and the fork lift
truck driving sessions, as well as sports coaching and supporting women
into non-traditional roles at professional level.
The proposed projects will act to form structured and professional
relationships with the newly developed Children’s Centres and will further
promote their work in delivering accredited training to parents and
families. It is expected that there will be around 100 beneficiaries from
activity relating to the Training Sub-Group.
Bournville College has been heavily involved in the Agender project from
its inception, with its representative Maggie Dilloway being involved at
Core and Sub-Group level, as well as being the lead contact on several
projects linked to Agender.
Maggie’s degree and research career have focused upon gender and equality
issues within society and the family. She has undertaken a variety of
research projects relating to women, ethnic minority participation, and
gender and work issues, some of these as part of the Agender project.
Maggie has undertaken a lengthy piece of research which involved
interviews with women currently in non-traditional gender roles. The aim
was to establish the factors that enabled these choices. There was also a
second piece of research which focused on the attitudes of women from
minority groups, in particular, mothers and lone parents towards
non-gender traditional employment.
Innovative activity:
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Mini BICCS Female Sports Coaching
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Fork Lift Truck Training
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Women Into Non-Traditional Employment Training Package
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Women in Enterprise
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Women Into Non-Traditional Work
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Community Horticulture
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