The Ministry of Justice has awarded our service new Probation rehabilitation services in four English regions (South East, South West, East and North West). These will commence in June 2021.

Through these new services, we will provide support to a number of the 89,000 people on probation across these regions each year. The contracts include education, training and employment, accommodation, and personal wellbeing support. The aim is to decrease peoples’ motivation to commit crime in future, boosting their chances of securing a job or finding a suitable place to live.

Working with national criminal justice charities the Forward Trust and Prison Advice and Care Trust (PACT) to deliver new personal wellbeing support services in Kent and Cheshire, we will look at the social care challenges that prevent people who have convictions from making more progress on their rehabilitation journey. The focus will be on rebuilding their family ties, limiting the negative influence of their peers involved in crime, and engaging them in targeted pro-social activities. There will also be courses aimed at building people’s parenting skills and relationships with their children through the personal wellbeing contracts we have secured.

Employment provides structure in a person’s life, helping them reintegrate back into society after exiting the criminal justice system, but many of these individuals face barriers to getting a job. The Department of Education reports that more than three in five (62%) people entering prison were assessed as having a reading age of 11 or lower—over three times higher than in the general adult population (15%). A YouGov survey commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions in 2016 found that half of employers automatically reject applicants with a criminal record.

In the year to March 2018, one in seven people who left prison were homeless. This increased to more than one in five people serving a prison sentence of less than six months. Finding suitable accommodation after release unlocks other important areas of a person’s life that can hold them back from fulfilling their potential, such as finding work, accessing treatment for addictions and mental ill-health – all of which can further reduce an individual’s likelihood of reoffending.

These new services will support the Government’s aim to address the £18.1 billion annual cost of reoffending each year as finding more people who have convictions a job or a safe place to live can help to halve reoffending rates.

Suki Binning, the Group’s Chief Social Worker and Executive Director of Justice and Social Care at Interventions Alliance, said:

At Interventions Alliance, we believe that no one should be left behind in the criminal justice system. These new services are an opportunity to deliver targeted interventions to improve the outcomes for people with convictions who are far too often overlooked by society.

Finding a job or a place to live are crucial steps forward as people with convictions looks to rebuild their life after release. The truth is that many people with convictions face barriers to making more progress as they continue on their rehabilitation journey.

Some of the key factors that contribute to the reasons why people are trapped in a pattern of reoffending are poor social environments and poverty. Addressing these factors through targeted support helps individuals to turn a corner on their criminal past and benefits society in the long run.

Promoting and protecting the wellbeing of people with former convictions, helping them rebuild family ties and new circles of support will provide more structure in their lives. This holistic approach has wide-ranging benefits for individuals, their families and society as a whole. We know that the risk of offending starts early in life and is linked strongly with social exclusion and mental ill-health. The interventions we will provide not only reap health and social benefits for the individuals’ families, but they will also be a positive step forward in helping to reduce the number of victims of crime in the future.

Part of the employee-owned Seetec Group, we are an evidence-led provider of public services, bridging the gap between the justice and social care sectors to build better futures and improve wellbeing. We are experienced at supporting 19,100 people with convictions each year as they progress on their rehabilitation journeys through our four probation services in Wales and the South of England.

Further information

We will deliver the following rehabilitation services to the Probation Service in each region from the end of June:

• South East:
  • Education, Training and Employment (Kent, Surrey and Sussex);
  • Accommodation (Kent, Surrey and Sussex); and
  • The Personal Wellbeing (Kent) contract.
• South West:
  • Education, Training and Employment; and
  • Accommodation contract.
• East of England:
  • Education, Training and Employment; and
  • Accommodation contract.
• North West:
  • Accommodation; and
  • The Personal Wellbeing contract (Cheshire).

Learn more about how our service supports people on their rehabilitation journeys by reading about how we helped an individual to find a place to live, here, and  how we worked with another to secure him a new job, here.

You can also find out more about what our service does by watching a short video about our work, here.