LATEST COMPANY NEWS
Our programme in young offender units - 'A Career In Crime?' - has reduced considerably in light of the second year of Prison Service 3% budget cuts, imposed by The Ministry of Justice. Despite the clear success of our behaviour challenging, personal development workshops in HM YOIs Feltham and Reading and the hard work of their Resettlement Teams in trying to secure our services, we had to reluctantly withdraw from both locations in March 2009 since funding could not be found for their continuance. Whilst this is disappointing in itself, in fairness, many of our sister support agencies have suffered similarly as Governors are faced with staff losses in trying to balance their budgets. However, our work continues at HM YOI Huntercombe with 15-18 year old male juveniles since this age group is, for the time being, unaffected by the budget cuts. We continue to monitor the situation and would have no hesitation in returning to Feltham and/or Reading should the position change. Jack Straw has, after all, finally ditched the Ministry of Justice's plans to build 3 Titan super-prisons in favour of 5 smaller local prisons. If prisons must be built, then smaller units are infinitely more manageable and will provide more humane conditions for inmates than would their US-style super-cousins.
Our programme in Greater London schools - 'You Don't Know Who You're Dealing With!' - has been seen by over 66,000 young people in Greater London secondary schools over the past 4 years. Anticipating the downturn in our work in young offender units, we introduced a 6-month pilot project in West London primary schools, targeting Year 5 and 6 students as they approach their transfer to 'big' school. we developed this 90-minute module in response to requests from teaching staff who reported that it is often in the transition from primary to secondary school that some - not all - young people can be vulnerable to negative peer pressure. This has, very much, been borne out by our own findings in the behaviour of young people in primary schools. They are much more open, demonstrative and willing to engage in role play than their secondary school counterparts who are, in most cases, just one year older. It appears that they become much more aware and guarded as they move through the secondary school system.
As we predicted in our 2007-2008 Annual Report, 2009 would probably be our most challenging year in terms of fundraising and this has proved to be the case. However, we have over 87% of our annual budgetary needs already in place in the 2009-2010 financial year and, with our 'rolling' programme of continual fundraising, are confident that we shall achieve our funding targets in order that our workshops, both prison- and community-based, can be rolled out to our young people.
In response to inmates' requests, we recently introduced a Resource Disc, a 45-minute CD which recaps on our YOI-based workshop content with encouraging confidence building messages coupled with pre- and post-release advice and guidance. The CD also acts as a 'taster' for inmates who may not yet have attended our workshops, hopefully encouraging them to come along. We are also developing downloadable Fact Sheets for schools, again at their request, in order that our workshop content can be explored in Citizenship and Staying Safe themed workshops.
For our young offender programme, we also introduced Freepost envelopes into our Information Packs, encouraging lads to write to us further with ideas and suggestions for future workshop content once they have had time to reflect on what they saw and heard during their time with us. Initial responses from inmates have been very encouraging.
We are also delighted to report that Outside Chance achieved 'Investors in People' accreditation at our first attempt. We are extremely grateful to our pre assessment advisor, our assessor and The Urban Partnership Group for their grant of £500 towards the cost of the assessment itself.
Please watch out for our newsletters in January, April, July and October each year and regular website updates, all of which will keep you informed of our continued progress.