BEFRIENDING

Our volunteers donated over 8,050 hours during 2009.

New Bridge trains volunteers to befriend and encourage prisoners.  Many feel lonely, cut off, angry or depressed and want a listening ear, a non judgemental mind with which to engage or just news of the outside world. 

The first move will come from the prisoner who will have heard of New Bridge from other prisoners, staff, chaplains and Inside Time. Such prisoners are often serving long sentences and have no other connection with the outside world as family and friends have fallen away. Indeed, because volunteers promise to maintain contact with their prisoner throughout their sentence and prisoners are frequently moved from prison to prison, the volunteer can become the only stable human relationship they have.

New Bridge has 18 active volunteer support groups based in Birmingham, Bristol, Durham, Exeter, Hampshire, Leeds, Liverpool, London (8 groups), Manchester, Weymouth and Wolverhampton.

In 2009, 184 volunteers travelled a total of 138,216 miles to make 493 visits and 7,140 letters were exchanged to 397 prisoners in 145 prisons and special hospitals in England and Wales.

CASE STUDY: VISITING TALES