'Fantastic! Every student now has a very clear picture about what will be waiting for them if they choose to follow the path of crime' - Barnhill Community School, Hayes

Outside Chance, a Company Limited By Guarantee and a Registered Charity, was formed on June 01, 1998 by Ian Ross, its Chief Executive and the late Martyn Pope-Gilbert, its former Company Secretary. Ian, originally from a sales and marketing background, had become Administration Manager of a charity which dealt with male adult offenders. Martyn had extensive experience of the voluntary sector, had also been an employee of the charity and was looking for a new challenge.

In mid 1998, we decided to form our own charity with nothing more than £25 and the belief that we could, with their own help, make an impact on the thought processes of the inmates we were seeing as volunteers in pre-release workshops at HMPs Brixton, Wandsworth and Wormwood Scrubs. Applications to a range of grant-making trusts followed, one of which attracted the support of The Tudor Trust who continue to fund our work today.

In early 1999, we were approached by The Foundation Training Co Ltd, [FTC] who provide IT skills workshops in 10 prisons and YOIs across England as well as intensive post-release support in their Resource Centres in Hackney and Lambeth. They had heard of our work with adult inmates and invited us to trial our approach at HM YOI Feltham, Europe's largest young offender unit, with their 15-21 year old juvenile and young adult inmates. This enabled us to reach inmates at a much younger age in the hope that they might be steered away from considering a continued 'Career In Crime?', the title of our workshop. In mid 1999, we were asked to increase the workshop time from one hour to a full afternoon and then to a full day in response to inmates' requests.  Due to a change in its education regime in 2004, we voluntarily withdrew from Feltham and relocated to HM YOI Rochester, the original 'Borstal', where we continued until February 2007 before their P-ASRO programme - Prisons Addressing Substance Related Offending - moved towards 'complementary and alternative therapies', no longer requiring our input.  We developed a new initiative at HM YOI Reading in early 2005 with 18-21 year old males inmates which, sadly, ended in March 2009 due to the annual Prison Service budget cuts.

 

In March 2007, we again relocated to a new initiative at HM YOI Huntercombe with 15-18 year old male inmates, a client group lost to us when we withdrew from HM YOI Feltham.  This venue provides us with the opportunity to intervene in inmates' behaviour at a much young age.  In early 2004, we opened in HM YOI Aylesbury, England's high security unit for long term young adult inmates before voluntarily withdrawing in mid 2008 as their management would not partially support our workshop costs.

 

At the time of writing, we are operational in HM YOI Huntercombe only, again due to the annual Prison service budget cuts.

 

In the last 11 years, over 4,000 juvenile and young adult inmates have passed through our workshops.