Best practice

Women Like Us has been helping women to get back to work for the last six years. Our innovative model has been commended as an example of best practice, and our first-hand experience in this area informs all our recommendations to Government and policy makers.

Read on for a summary of Women Like Us’ methods and achievements…

Back-to-work support

It’s often hard for parents to access employment support, so we reach out to them at the school gates. We currently partner with 232 schools and childrens’ centres across 17 London boroughs, reaching over 100,000 parents. Over 23,000 parents have registered with us.

More than 4,300 parents have received publicly funded support through Women Like Us. We help them to build their skills and confidence through information, advice and guidance, employability support and career coaching. Additionally, our job brokerage team matches parents to local, part time opportunities.

Women Like Us’ track record of helping mothers into work outperforms industry standards. Our record for mothers who are still in work after six months is eight times better than mainstream DWP welfare to work programmes.¹

We have delivered this publicly funded support on behalf of a wide range of Government agencies.

Part time recruitment service

We run a full service recruitment agency and an online jobs board, specialising in quality part time vacancies in London. We work across all sectors, dealing with employers from start-ups through to leading companies. Over 1,300 employers have advertised vacancies with us and we have placed over 1,000 candidates into part time jobs that fit around their family.

Innovation

Women Like Us frequently pilots new initiatives to help create more part time jobs for women, often working in partnership with employers and business networks. Past projects include:

• Towry – providing a consultancy service including pre and post recruitment support, for women to retrain as Personal Wealth Advisors 
• Southwark Council – attracting women into apprenticeships to become Family Aide Workers 
• Federation of Small Businesses – training seminars on the business benefits of part time work and how to design and implement part-time jobs 
• The Appointments Commission – running an open event to attract women with previous careers as senior professionals into Non Executive Directorships with charities
• London Fire Brigade – attracting more women to become firefighters
• Darwins Deli – running open mornings for women looking for self employment opportunities

Commended as an example of best practice

Our work has been cited in a number of strategic reports as an example of best practice:

End Child Poverty 
European Social Fund  
Institute for Public Policy Research  

1  Comparing job sustained outputs on Women Like Us two year programmes vs performance data for DWP, taken from analysis completed by Inclusion and The London Development Agency, 2011