Dr Perpetual Eze-Idehen, Communications and Engagement Coordinator for Sustainable Futures and postgraduate researcher, founded the Parents, Carers and Guardians Network from her own lived experience as a student seeking support. She created an inclusive community for staff and students balancing academic or professional responsibilities with caring roles.

Building on this grassroots initiative, the Future Families project was established to embed these needs institutionally, driving systemic change in policy, culture and provision across the University. We spoke to Perpetual to find out more about Future Families and the impact it has had so far.

Please can you tell us more about Future Families and why you decided to set up this project?

I lead Future Families in collaboration with Professor Rachel Cowen and it was developed as part of the Athena Swan Objective 6 Action Plan, which focuses on fostering an inclusive, supportive and family-friendly culture. Through the development of accessible facilities, strengthening support networks and embedding inclusive policies, Future Families is actively enhancing the lived experience of staff and students with caring responsibilities and supporting the University’s broader commitment to advancing equity, diversity and inclusion.

The project was established in response to a recognised gap in how universities understand and support the diverse realities of family life, including parents, carers, prospective parents, guardians and those navigating complex or non-traditional family pathways such as fertility journeys, adoption and caring for extended family members. While policies and provisions exist, they are often shaped around traditional assumptions of linear career progression and uninterrupted productivity, which do not reflect the lived experiences of many individuals.

Future Families aims to bridge this gap through community insight, institutional engagement and evidence-based approaches, ensuring that the voices of colleagues and students with caring responsibilities are heard and used to inform meaningful institutional change.

We encourage this through several key areas of activity, including raising awareness and improving visibility of existing support and provision; advocating for more inclusive and flexible policies and practices; and working collaboratively with Faculties, PS colleagues and leadership teams to influence institutional priorities.

An important part of the work is community building. I founded and currently chair the University’s Parents, Carers and Guardians Network, a platform for peer support, shared experiences and collective voice which has helped contribute to a more inclusive and supportive culture across the University.

What do you hope to achieve through Future Families?

Future Families aims to drive meaningful institutional change by creating a university environment where academic life and family life are not in tension but are supported together. It aims to embed inclusion into everyday systems and processes, ensuring that considerations around family life are not treated as an add-on, but are integrated into how the University designs its policies, environments, and ways of working.

It seeks to ensure that staff and students with parenting and caring responsibilities are recognised, valued and enabled to fully participate and progress within the University.

Another important area of focus is community and connection, and we seek to strengthen peer support and create safe and supportive spaces for shared experiences.

We hope that we have created a scalable and sustainable framework that can be adopted across Faculties and potentially shared more widely across the higher education sector as a model of good practice.

What is the impact of your project so far?

Through the Future Families initiative, we have delivered meaningful progress in strengthening support for staff and students with parenting and caring responsibilities across the University. This work has been driven through cross-institutional collaboration, bringing together colleagues from People, EDI, Estates, Student Services, Compliance, the Students’ Union and external partners.

The Parents, Carers and Guardians Network has grown to over 300 members, with an active programme of events. We have also enhanced student-facing webpages to improve how support is signposted and accessed, with further developments for colleague pages under way.

To improve data capture and insights, we developed the Future Families survey, enabling University data to be analysed by caring responsibility categories to support more targeted and inclusive approaches.

The initiative is now contributing to policy influence and institutional change, providing input into the development of new and enhanced policies, including neonatal support, carers’ provision and safeguarding children on campus.

In addition, we are working on a family-friendly space audit across the University, also exploring opportunities for affiliated nursery provision and partnerships with local childcare providers.

Are there any plans for the future of the project?

Yes, Future Families is continuing to evolve and we are keen to embed more practical, visible and sustainable support for colleagues and students with parenting and caring responsibilities. The next phase is centred on translating insight into tangible improvements that enhance both experience and access, including enhancing family-friendly facilities, exploring childcare solutions, embedding inclusive thinking, improving coordination across departments and continuing to grow the Parents, Carers and Guardians Network. We are also working to build a stronger evidence base and evaluation framework to support ongoing development.

Find out more and get involved through the Parents, Carers and Guardians Network webpage.