Work Experience For Stay-At-Home Parents

21 September 2012, 05:00

A Thames Valley charity is starting up a volunteering programme to help stay-at-home parents gain work experience.

The idea of the scheme, set up by PACT (Parents and Children Together), is for stay-at-home mums and dads to work with their local schools to support the charity and its work helping vulnerable families.

PACT will give a network of parent volunteers free training and advice on running things like school fundraising initiatives, coffee mornings and concerts.

In return, the parents will be given a certificate and a reference from the charity.

Anna Fowler from PACT told Heart:

"I think a lot parents have skills they don't even know about.

"You are a multi-tasker, you are an event organiser.

"So this is just a way of channeling those into something that is benefical not only to them, so they can kick-start their career, but also to us."

Parent volunteer Mrs Mafaz Ali from Winnersh, said:

"I've wanted to volunteer for a while, but was not sure how to do this in a way that suited me.

"The PACT schools programme appealed to me as I will be learning new skills and experiences that I can use when it is time to go back to work."

For more than a hundred years PACT has been running children's centres and community projects across Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, as well as supporting families affected by poverty, homelessness and domestic abuse.

Email anna.fowler@pactcharity.org for more information.