Nowadays, Jane Knight is the embodiment of the organisation she founded. Impeccably dressed and rarely seen without one of her trademark wide-brimmed hats – many of which she makes herself – she is an assured networker.
But 12 years ago, after leaving her role as a college careers adviser and apprenticeships manager to raise her son Daniel, Knight barely recognised herself.
“You’re just known as being someone’s mum instead of being known for you,” she reflects.
The mothers she met at playgroups told similar stories, their confidence gone and feeling unsure whether employers would still value them after years away from work.
With nearly two decades of careers advice, apprenticeships and FE behind her, Knight set herself a challenge: help 100 mums back into work. She posted a simple message on Facebook offering free careers advice to mothers in her home borough of Bromley.
Today, Successful Mums Careers Academy has supported more than 12,000 women into employment through careers guidance, qualifications and employer partnerships. Knight describes it as “like a college for mums”, although dads and non-parents are welcome too.
Its courses span digital skills and autism awareness, to business start-up, wellbeing and menopause support.
The organisation has grown as getting people back into work has become an increasingly urgent government priority.
While much of the political debate has focused on the sharp rise in young people not in education, employment or training, another trend receiving less attention is the growing number of women who have left the labour market.
Women accounted for more than two-thirds of the increase in economically inactive people with long-term sickness between 2014 and 2022, with numbers rising from around one million to 1.3 million.
Knight believes the barriers mums face can usually be distilled into the “three Cs”: confidence, careers advice and childcare.
Jane Knight (in her hat) with Successful Mums’ learners
It takes a village
Walk into one of Successful Mums’ programmes and the atmosphere feels noticeably different from a traditional employability course.
The organisation’s 18 staff are all mums themselves and work flexibly from home, meeting twice a month in Bromley. Their philosophy is simple: mums supporting mums.
Learners congratulate one another in online group chats whenever someone lands a job, symbolically “ringing the bell”.
“They lift each other up,” says director of education Lisa Harriss. “Women tell us, ‘You made me brave. You made me remember who I am. I’m not just a mum – I’ve got potential.’
“We reignite that fire and get them ready to work again.”
Many women arrive carrying far more than a gap in their CV – some with qualifications not recognised in England, some lone parents or caring for children with additional needs, and others simply isolated after years outside the workplace.
Knight believes loneliness among mothers remains one of society’s hidden problems.
“You imagine loneliness is somebody who’s 100 and sitting in a rocking chair,” she says. “But lots of mums feel lonely too.
“Some of the women we help haven’t been out of the house for months. Employment is the goal, but it’s also about wellbeing, confidence and community.”
Harriss believes the phrase “it takes a village to raise a child” also applies to women needing support when they are trying to return to work after having children. “When you feel most vulnerable and on your own, that’s when you need your tribe.”
Successful Mums learners sharing food from their cultures at a celebration event
Back-to-work superpowers
Every programme is designed backwards from a single outcome: sustainable employment.
Each learner begins with a values exercise, reflecting on the kind of organisation they would enjoy working for and how a job must fit around family life.
“If somebody’s values are around community and charity, perhaps they don’t want to work for a bank in the City,” Knight explains. “It’s about finding somewhere they’ll actually thrive.”
Most adults only receive careers advice at school, though priorities change dramatically later in life.
Knight believes there is a “hidden jobs market” of occupations rarely on people’s radars but which offer rewarding, flexible careers – from qualifications assessors to non-clinical NHS roles and jobs in schools beyond classroom teaching.
“We hear women say, ‘I’m just a mum, I’ve got nothing to offer’,” Knight says.
“But think about everything they’ve been doing. Conflict management. Negotiation. Event management from organising children’s parties. Budgeting. Problem-solving. Resilience. Empathy.
“Being a mum is a superpower.
“When we help women recognise that, you see them walk differently. Those subtle changes make an enormous difference.”
Jane Knight (left) with some of her team at Successful Mums, including Lisa Harriss (third from left)
Built to order
Successful Mums has also turned curriculum planning on its head.
Rather than build programmes and hope employers recruit from them, the team ask employers what they need and then design training around those vacancies.
That approach has led to long-standing partnerships with multi-academy trusts including the Harris Federation and Nexus Education Schools Trust, and organisations such as London South East Colleges.
As schools prepare for wider SEND reforms and rising demand for specialist support in mainstream classrooms, Successful Mums is retraining mums for SEND roles.
“Schools are telling us they need people,” Knight says. “The SEND areas are certainly not cutting back.”
Harriss believes mums often bring something qualifications cannot teach.
“We’ve got mums raising neurodivergent children who are incredibly passionate about SEND,” she says. “You can’t teach that fire.”
While delivering a level 3 autism qualification, staff found the standard materials were not working.
“The resources were full of question-and-answer exercises,” Harriss recalls. “For somebody who hasn’t studied for years, that’s an immediate barrier.”
The team rebuilt the course around discussion, digital skills and real job roles, with autistic learners from a local specialist college acting as co-trainers.
“They’re the experts by experience,” Harriss says. “Their voices should be at the centre.”
Successful Mums learners
The changing jobs market
Many women returning to work feel the workplace moved on without them while they were raising children.
“They’ll say, ‘Everything’s digital now’,” says head of contracts and performance Charlotte Edwardes. “They’ve lost confidence because they think everybody else has kept up.”
Artificial intelligence has added to the uncertainty.
Knight believes it may leave some adults needing to retrain and she is already supporting women whose marketing or copywriting careers have narrowed because of it, while steering them towards work where human skills stay at a premium.
“The jobs we’re preparing people for still rely on empathy, relationships and communication,” Knight says. “Those are things AI can’t replace.”
Knight school
Knight learnt early how precarious the jobs market can be.
At 16, she began a business administration apprenticeship with Personal Consultancy Services in Bromley, inducting young people onto the government’s Youth Training Scheme.
When funding changed and the provider lost its contract, she was made redundant.
“I learnt very early on that you can’t rely on one funding stream,” she says.
Today, Successful Mums deliberately maintains at least three funding routes at once.
“If you’ve only got one big contract, you’re vulnerable. The carpet can just be pulled from underneath you.”
Nine years in a “dull” data role at SOLOTEC, South London’s training and enterprise council, taught Knight about funding compliance and audit.
When the training and enterprise councils gave way to the Learning and Skills Council, she joined Bromley College, now part of London South East Colleges, working across apprenticeships, careers guidance and teaching.
“I’ve seen this sector from almost every angle,” Knight says. “That’s been like gold dust.”
Leaving the college after having Daniel, she found rebuilding a career after motherhood far harder than she had imagined.
She began by Googling flexible vacancies and offering free CV and interview support.
One of the first women she helped, Regan, wanted to turn a passion for cookery into a business. A Bromley Council-funded start-up programme followed, and Regan went on to establish The Cookery Shed.
Knight worked free of charge for more than a year, until her husband pointed out that while she was changing lives, she also needed to help pay the bills.
“He had a fair point,” she says.
The venture has since become a family enterprise. Daniel, now 17, grew up alongside it, occasionally sitting in on staff interviews for work experience.
Jane Knight with her son Daniel at the National Women’s Awards last month where Knight was given the award for lifetime achievement
Reinvent with the times
Successful Mums has reinvented itself repeatedly as funding priorities have shifted.
Early programmes were supported through the European Social Fund. As that ended and adult education funding was cut back, Knight believes the landscape has become more explicit about job outcomes.
“We’re very clear with women now that this isn’t simply about attending a course,” she says. “It’s about where that course will lead.”
That focus has grown as employment support has been devolved to mayoral combined authorities and councils through programmes such as Connect to Work.
Successful Mums delivers directly and as a subcontractor for larger organisations including Maximus, Seetec and Step Ahead, with skills bootcamp funding, particularly for SEND support roles, now an important strand.
In 2024, it became an employee-owned trust, giving its all-mum team a direct stake in its future.
Family fortunes
Knight believes childcare remains one of the biggest reasons women struggle to return to work, a barrier made harder as crèches have disappeared from college campuses over the past 15 years amid rising costs and adult education cutbacks.
She recalls Bromley College’s crèche closing when she started there.
“Closing creches might have saved money,” she says, “but it cost colleges as well.”
Many adults, she believes, no longer see colleges as places for them.
“They think colleges are for young people,” she says. “They don’t realise what’s available.”
Successful Mums instead invests in community events that seem on the surface to have little to do with employability.
A hair and beauty workshop held last week was “about helping somebody feel confident enough to walk into an interview”. Coffee mornings in schools also reach mums who other organisations miss.
“If anything, we’ve got too many mums coming to us,” Knight says.
Many employers are willing to be flexible but simply fail to advertise it, she adds.
“Sometimes it’s simply about knowing to ask.”
One company had spent six months failing to fill a full-time vacancy. Knight suggested splitting it between two mothers returning to work.
“They filled the vacancy almost immediately,” she says.
Harriss recalls one woman who had been a doctor in her home country but felt stuck working in her family’s shop.
Rather than push her towards the quickest route into employment, Successful Mums helped her map a pathway back into medicine. She is now training to become a surgeon.
“It’s not about getting somebody into any job,” Harriss says. “It’s about asking, ‘What job do you actually want to do?’ Then we build a plan to get you there.”
More dads are using the service too.
One male learner, Alkarim Haji, joined a business start-up programme while homeless and went on to establish a self-defence business supporting women affected by domestic abuse.
Following his death, he was posthumously named inspirational adult learner of the year in the 2024 Mayor of London’s Awards.
Despite its name, Successful Mums was never really about mums alone.
“It’s about community, wellbeing, social mobility and paving the way for the kids,” says Knight.
She says the impact can extend to the next generation. Schools report improved attendance and punctuality when parents return to work and family routines become more structured, while children grow up seeing employment as something positive and achievable.
Twelve years after offering free careers advice to local mothers on Facebook, Knight is still motivated most by seeing their confidence return.
Women who arrive introducing themselves as “just a mum” leave believing in themselves again.
“They walk differently,” she says.