MENTORING

MENTORING PROJECT - LIVERPOOL

In January 2009 we received three years funding to develop the mentoring work, with a full-time co-ordinator. The project is based in the community and is open to prisoners on shorter sentences, returning to live in the city. The project works with a number of prisons in the region; HMP Liverpool, HMP Risley, HMP Kennett, HMP & YOI Styal etc.

We provide a high quality service to those who most need it. The key criteria is that beneficiaries will have a clear and existing link to Liverpool (so that we can them build links with existing friends etc.) and be serving a short sentence (12 months or less) when they apply.

Our mentors are volunteers who have experiences and knowledge that could prove beneficial to prisoners who are preparing for their release, perhaps just by offering a link to the outside world and helping to point in the right direction when it comes to benefits advice, counselling and therapies or housing. All these volunteers undergo a recruitment process as they would if they were seeking paid employment.

HM YOI SWINFEN HALL

The focus of Swinfen Hall is the resettlement of it’s mainly longer-term prisoners. The prison sees itself as at the heart of the government’s overall delivery plan for reducing re-offending. At Swinfen Hall individual needs are identified early and, through an active and integrated regime of education skills, training and the specialised accredited offending behaviour and substance-abuse courses, we address needs and reduce risks.

The mentoring scheme at Swinfen Hall is aimed at providing prisoners with Through the Gate support to enable them to successfully resettle back into the community when leaving prison.

Mentors will support prisoners to change their lives by offering encouragement, guidance, and helping them access information which will help their resettlement. The objective is to enable the mentee to become independent, take control and break the cycle of offending. Typically support can be around education, training, employment, filling free time constructively, family issues, other social issues and staying crime free.

In order to give the relationship time to develop prior to release, we aim to match a mentee with a trained volunteer mentor approximately 3 months before the prisoner is discharged. Mentors will support the mentee through visits and letters, and continue to meet when the prisoner is released back into the community.

HM YOI THORN CROSS

We were awarded a Ministry of Justice contract to provide mentors from November 2008. Currently, each of the young men who go through the High Intensity Training (HIT) programme at the prison is successfully mentored through our project.

CASE STUDIES: EMMA'S STORY | DANIEL'S STORY