Symposium: Working, Learning, and Caring

On Friday 24th March, we will be hosting a Symposium on ‘Working, Learning, and Caring.’  This event, marking International Women’s Day (8th March), is jointly organised by Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Employee Engagement, the Parents and Carers Staff Network, and other interested TU Dublin community members.

The Symposium will:

• explore the policy and legislative context of carework in Ireland; 

• feature the lived experiences of members of the TU Dublin community in combining care work or care responsibilities, paid work, and/or study; and 
• include breakout sessions where participants reflect on their own experiences and consider organisations’ good practice initiatives on supporting carers in the workplace. 

We all give and receive care.  In Ireland, women currently provide the majority of child, elder, and other forms of care.  The distribution of care work in a society plays a central role in the continuation of gendered inequalities.  At some stage we will all likely have caring responsibilities, be they for children, elderly parents, friends or family members with disabilities/chronic illness.  This symposium will consider the impacts of combining care responsibilities with paid work and/or study. It will emphasise the importance of valuing caring work for our individual and collective wellbeing.  The event will conclude with a networking lunch.

Programme

09:50-10:00 – Welcome

10:00-11:00 - Policy and Legislative Context

Keynote Speakers: Care work in Ireland (40 mins)

• Professor Helen Russell, Economic and Social Research Institution (ESRI)
• Orla O’Connor, National Women’s Council Ireland (NWCI)
• Q&A (20 mins)

11:00-12:00 - Lived Experiences Panel

Panel Presentations: Working, Learning and Caring (30 mins)

Roundtable on Experiences (5 Speakers)

Whole group discussion (20 mins)

12:05-12:15 – Comfort Break

12:15-13:20 – Good Practice Panel

Panel Presentations (30 mins)

• Sue O’Grady, Family Carers Ireland
• Joy-Tendai Kangere, Co-Founder, Roots in Africa-Ireland
• Cleo McCormack, Head of Organisational Development, Version 1

Breakout session: (15 mins)

How can we create better environments for the integration of care responsibilities into work and learning environments? Where do we go from here?

Whole group discussion: Next steps (20 mins)

13:20-13:30 Conclusion and Close

13:30-14:00 - Networking Lunch

Microsoft Teams link for virtual attendees:

https://teams.microsoft.com/dl/launcher/launcher.html?url=%2F_%23%2Fl%2Fmeetup-join%2F19%3Ameeting_YmJmYmJiY2MtY2MxNS00YTJhLWI5OGItOGQ2NTc2YjIwZGZh%40thread.v2%2F0%3Fcontext%3D%257b%2522Tid%2522%253a%2522766317cb-e948-4e5f-8cec-dabc8e2fd5da%2522%252c%2522Oid%2522%253a%2522644c236d-87e2-4315-bd1e-e35adf96cf0f%2522%257d%26anon%3Dtrue&type=meetup-join&deeplinkId=98d335d3-3f36-4609-8a1b-e02596fef902&directDl=true&msLaunch=true&enableMobilePage=true&suppressPrompt=true

Meeting ID: 372 829 712 118

Passcode: zj8h3Y