LATEST COMPANY NEWS
Our programme in young offender units - 'A Career In Crime?' - has reduced considerably in light of the fourth year of 3% Prison Service 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, themselves testament to the failure of existing prisons, 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 70,000 young people in Greater London secondary schools over the past 6 years. Anticipating the downturn in our work in young offender units, we have focused our efforts into developing both our anti crime and STD/STI awareness modules in even more Greater London schools.
As we predicted in our 2008-2009 Annual Report, 2009/10 would probably be our most challenging year in terms of fundraising and this has proved to be the case. However, we have over 82% of our annual budgetary needs already in place for the 2010-2011 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. We are extremely grateful to The Leathersellers' Company for their new 4-year support of our work and to The Mercers' Company for their new 2-year grant. We have much for which to thank the liveried companies in London in their past and current support of our work.
Our 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, continues to attract praise. 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. We are now developing a DVD updatable resource for eventual distribution to schools, youth groups, young offender units and other venues where young people gather.
Our provision of reply paid envelopes in our Inmate Information Packs has encouraged a number of inmates to make contact with us following our workshop delivery. Initial responses from inmates on a variety of issues have been extremely encouraging.
Our 'Investors in People' accreditation, secured at our first attempt, is under review in May 2010 and we are confident of meeting the improved standard.
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.
May 2010