Barnardo’s: Facilitation for Regional Equalities Group

We have a long-term working relationship with Barnardo’s and have worked both regionally and nationally on many aspects of equality and diversity.

Our first project some 15 years ago with Barnardo's was in the North West, where the organisation there was very aware that its approach to equality and diversity was not consistent – across the 24 projects in the region, or across the various equality strands. There had been some work on race and a long term commitment to working with disabled children and children and young people from deprived communities. This had not necessarily generated a comparable amount of interest in gender, sexual orientation or faith.

We delivered an introductory course for the Director of the north west region and her Senior Management Team, which aimed to give them a shared analysis of equalities and its impact on their design and delivery of their services. We then designed and delivered a one day course for each project in the region.

This was followed by other more specific interventions. For instance we ran a conference for all the staff on lesbian and gay equality, worked with the lesbian and gay staff and devised with them a series of interventions for lesbian and gay young people.

This was also followed by more work in other parts of Barnardo’s. For instance, we ran courses for the Marketing and Communications department; for black professionals in Wales; for the project dealing with Barnardo’s children who came back, some after many years, to find out about their childhoods.

The feedback from project workers and from managers was very satisfactory. The projects in the north west changed their focus and improved their delivery, particularly to ethnic minorities.

As a result of this programme they revisited the learning and development that was offered to Barnardo’s staff nationally and commissioned us to devise and deliver a 12 month programme for their learning and development professionals, to ensure that they integrated equalities into all their mainstream training.