I woke up today and thought I was back in Pittsburgh, it was raining and you could barely see anything because the clouds were so low. However once I got down to the buffet at the hotel and heard all the brummie accents I quickly remembered I was in Birmingham. Today we got to do a site visit to Ladywood Family center. The family center is part of West Smethwick Enterprise (WSE) which is a charity that focuses on building community centers in lower-income and higher unemployed areas around Birmingham. These centers provide education, opportunities and care for children and their families. They currently have 5 sites in the greater Birmingham area. This one specifically in Ladywood focuses on early years care and education and only opened in September of 2021. It was interesting to learn about how the history of the charity started. It originally was a charity that was a part of a church that focused on the needs of geriatrics in a community. However as a community changes so does its needs.
I was really surprised and impressed with all the services that were offered at the family center. They provided education, care and opportunities to children ages 2-5 and during holiday they do they same with children up to the age of eight. Not only do they take care of the children but they help the families as well. Such as having healthy cooking classes and lessons that are on a budget, they mentioned that this was a huge area of concern because that neighborhood ahd 41% of children under the age of 6 that are obese. Furthermore they provide CV improvement and writing classes for parents and sit in sessions where parents can sit in the center and interact with their children. They provide a great community space for the children’s families and it serves as a real communal ground for all ages, not only does this help the families in a financial sense but it really serves a social purpose as well. Another thing that really surprised me was that they had a sensory room at the family center. I can recall from when I was age 2-5 that I never had a sensory room in my preschool or kindergarten class or daycare.
The community that this family center served is the 12th most deprived local authority in the 317 of England. It has a higher level of child poverty (27.6%) than the average in England, however it is a very diverse community, ethnically, racially and culturally. Surrounding the building there were three large apartment buildings which were government subsidized housing projects. They had all been recently renovated, it was suggested that this was because of the Grenfell tower fire that occurred in London years ago which had to do with the infrastructure of the building. According to the staff at the center a majority of the students live in these towers and other similar types of housing.
The second part of the day involved another lecture with an expert by experience. An expert by experience is someone who has directly lived an experience with something or a system and is not qualified in that area but comes to the university to teach students about their experiences so it provides a more real lens and sympathetic lens. Our expert by experience Sally was actually a nurse but she is expert by experience in social care especially with special needs. Two of her sons were diagnosed with ASD. She gave us really interesting insight into her experiences with her sons being diagnosed with ASD and how that has affected them, her and the rest of her family. Furthermore she has such a great understanding of the system. As we had learned before that diagnosis takes time with the NHS, Sally’s experience with getting one of her sons diagnosed with ASD took some time which is almost exactly what Jess, another one of our lecture, said she experienced when her brother was trying to get diagnosed with ASD. One of the other lectures today was Birgit who was from Germany originally and was a social worker there but is now a social worker here in the UK. It was really interesting to see how other European countries’ social care and workers were set up compared to the UK and the US.