Keighley Women's Centre has proved itself a national leader. Staff at the Skipton Road centre have organised the first national conference for women's centres.

The three-day event at Liverpool University aims to build a closer relationship between women's centres throughout the country and look at forming a federation.

Organising the event took months of work by centre manager Annette Dent and co-ordinator Jean O'Keeffe.

"It has been a tremendous amount of work," says Annette, "And we couldn't have coped if it wasn't for our colleagues sharing the burden of running the centre."

Preparing for and staging the conference was funded by a £26,000 millennium lottery grant, £2,000 from the Barrow Cadbury fund and some of the Keighley centre's money.

They built on an already successful regional network stretching through Halifax and Harrogate to Hull.

Helped by Jane Becker, a Sussex University researcher, they traced and contacted women's centres throughout the UK - from Scotland to Plymouth.

An A5 booklet of 107 women's centre profiles and addresses was produced.

A successful "practice run" conference for northern women's centres was held at Scarborough in March, last years.

The women hope a set of regional women's centre groups can be formed throughout the country and have suggested regional clusters in the booklet.

Bonding of different centres will be the conference's focus and there will be plenty of opportunity for different groups to mix.

Workshops on subjects like fundraising and IT will be available, and the chance to experience therapies like reflexology.

Annette says: "It's not a standard conference with someone standing speaking; it's much more geared to women's centres getting involved."

Annette and Jean would also like to see every women's centre equipped with a computer and modem and be connected by an intranet.

This will be examined in a feasibility study after the conference.

Women's centres have been defined by four common features:

They are started by women for local need

Run by women for women.

Have to be multi-issue, not just a counselling or domestic violence service

A central place where women can get together.

But Annette feels such centres constantly struggle for recognition and funding. She hopes the conference will raise the profile of all centres.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.