Tower Hamlets College: Equalities and Diversity Training

Equality Works has over 15 years experience of producing case studies and other training and facilitation based material for a range of audiences across a number of sector based agencies. In 2008 Equality Works developed a series of case studies as part of a corporate mainstreaming equalities programme for Tower Hamlets College. We presented these case studies to programme managers over a two-day equality training programme. The training programme was attended by over 40 managers.

Equality Works was commissioned by Tower Hamlets College to design and facilitate the training days as part their drive to embed equality and diversity throughout the organisation.  They also wanted to consolidate their position at Level 5 of the Equality Standard for Local Government and to skill up managers to embed equalities into their Service Plans and Team Plans.

As part of the conference the case studies were used in both theatre style sessions and smaller workshops. The process for developing the material included:

• An analysis of the learning needs at different levels and key areas of knowledge that would be covered in the conference. This included one-to-one meetings with Heads of Service, Team Leaders and members of the Corporate Equality Steering Group;
• Desk research on the organisation and wider sector based issues. It was important that the presentation material contained examples and information that individuals at different levels within the College could recognise and relate to their everyday job;
• Following the training needs analysis Equality Works designed separate workshop materials to take into account the needs of different audiences and work areas;
• Our materials included transferring visual and audio case studies onto DVD, paper-based material and a series of visual presentations.

The conference was attended by approximately 100 delegates from a range of key directorates within the authority.

As part of our evaluation process the feedback from the conference was analysed and reviewed. In this specific example the delegates scored the conference materials as very practical and because they enabled them to meet learning objectives.