Red Door is pleased to announce.....!

31 July 2012

Need help getting access to money?

Red Door welcomes new Associates Paul Tucker and Dominie Dunbrooke - our funding specialists, who are here and ready to help!.....

Open Hearts Open Minds is entering a new phase and a new home  on the Red Door Associates Website. Building on the success of the social inclusion Handbook written by Red Door Associates and its original website and e-news service funded until 2010 by Devon Strategic Partnership, Red Door Associates are responding to calls for a new way to access this sorely missed service......

Children's Centres are continuing to find evaluation a whole lot easier thanks to the Evaluation Toolkit published by Red Door Associates.  It has been designed with the benefit of our extensive work with Children's Centres, and makes a day to day approach to evaluation simple for Centre Staff and families to use.....

For more about all of these stories, read on below....................

Fundraising - Help is here!

11 November 2011

Need help getting across the fudraising tightrope?

We can help you identify the right grant programme for your project and guide you through the process of preparing your bid.
 
For more information see our new Grants and Bid Writing page.

You can also find out more about Paul Tucker and Domine Dunbrook who have joined us as our new funding specialists - check out the About Us page.

Evaluation Toolkit

30 July 2010

Our Evaluation Toolkit for Children's Centres continues to be popular, with Toolkits now being used in a range of Centres throughout England, to support Centres to develop evidence of their work and improve their day-to-day practice.

The Toolkit includes a range of tools which can be used as they are, or edited for particular circumstances (the Toolkit comes with a CD-rom version for easy editing). The aim of the tools is to keep things simple and to make evaluation easy to do, and fun for participants.

Examples of some of the tools can be viewed from the links at the bottom of this page.  A simple key makes it easy to see when you can use tools and what situations they are appropriate for.  Have a look at the contents page here.

To order a toolkit, please complete the order form, or contact  Sarah Taragon on 01363 860151 (or sarahtaragon@hotmail.com). 

Also contact Sarah to with any queries on the toolkit or on other ways in which Red Door Associates can support your Children’s Centre(s) with evaluation.

Red Door Associates are also able to offer a range of training sessions focused on participatory evaluation methods for use with groups and individuals. Please contact us if you are interested.

Please note:  images used on our website currently, are from Plymouth City Council's Toolkit, and may vary slightly from the version available for purchase.

The Toolkit has been funded by, and developed in liaison with, Plymouth’s Children’s Centres and Plymouth City Council.

Examples of some of the tools and content of the Toolkit can be seen below (more will be available soon). Please feel free to use the resources supplied here.

Example form
Example of a Visual tool
Example of a simple tool – no reading/writing required

Open Hearts Open Minds

30 July 2010

Open Hearts Open Minds (OHOM) has entered a new phase and a new home on the Red Door Associates Website, building on the success of the Handbook and its original website and e-news service. Sam Magne (OHOM author and Director of Red Door Associates) said she "is delighted to have the opportunity to take OHOM forward, reaching more people and sharing good practice and ideas".

Open Hearts Open Minds is a free learning resource that plugs you into the power of your attitude and makes a difference where it’s needed most!  

It helps you understand how social inclusion relates to your role and how the way you do your job can help.  

Users of its free and on-line 8 step course can adopt it DIY style - or bring in Red Door Associates to help teams think the issues through workshop style.  Either way you’ll find our workbook Open Hearts Open Minds has you - whatever you do - in mind.
 
That’s because its Red Door Associates authors developed it with a broad cross section of colleagues from all levels of the voluntary, public and social enterprise sectors.  They worked with Sam and Angi to design its user-friendly exercises to empower you and your managers to reduce the effects of social exclusion in your community - simply through the way you work, day to day.
 
So to connect social-inclusion, common-sense and good customer service principles with some jargon-free insight into the lives of vulnerable people, use our Open Hearts Open Minds resources now:

• On-line 8 step course 
• In-service support (we run a workshop programme for you)
• Inclusion Insight articles, from people in the know
• Inclusion updates from our work

Open Hearts Open Minds since 2003
The 8 step course was developed originally by Red Door Associates authors Sam Magne and Angi McTiernan as a published handbook.  They were asked by service providing organizations in Exeter to design learning tools to help them break cycles of deprivation and disadvantage.  (If you would like hard copies of the Handbook, contact Exeter Community Initiatives. )

On the heels of the success of the Handbook’s publication, the idea for an on-line news service was hatched with Devon Strategic Partnership;  The Handbook went on-line as the 8 step course and monthly exclusion-insight articles were written with people who experience or work to address the impact of exclusion.  Packed with useful information and real-life stories, the article library has grown to cover the full A-Z of exclusion issues, including Discrimination, Hate Crime, Asylum, Poverty and Rural Isolation.  The articles were provided whilst DSP funding was available between 2006 and 2010, and the service was highly acclaimed.

Red Door Associates now plan to plug the gap in the sorely missed service by providing you with insights arising from our work touching on inclusion, and now host the library of orginal articles and the ever-popular on-line tools. If you would like to be kept in touch with updates on social inclusion, just ask us here to send you our food for thought bulletins on social inclusion outcomes from our work.

What people say about Open Hearts Open Minds

"Equality of opportunity & social inclusion have been strong underlying principles of both Devon County Council & the DSP for a number of years now. There's a great deal of expertise in the county and Open Hearts Open Minds has provided a valuable tool to help people to continue to learn and to share experience.  The articles and learning material on the site are very varied, often challenging and always practical. It has provided a valuable addition to our learning community" Phil Norrey, Devon County Council's Chief Exec'.

"I have found Open Hearts Open Minds to be an excellent resource for my own understanding of equality and diversity issues and equally invaluable when assessing other Age Concerns for their Age Concern Federation Quality Counts accreditation, a scheme that is accepted by the Charity Commission. I have placed a link on our national team of assessors intranet and refer other charities to this site." Age Concern Chief Officer, Barrie Duke
 

 

"Having worked my way out of a childhood in one of the toughest areas in Birmingham, I'm working in Devon to inspire people facing disadvantage and to encourage pioneers who want to make a difference.  Open Hearts Open Minds can help you in doing the same through your own work, with its tools, information and ideas to keep you confident that you know you're doing what matters.    Welcome to this learning community of people who work to make changes for the better!"  Wilfred Emmanuel Jones, The Black Farmer

 



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