Partnership Finder

Word on the Kerb C.I.C. is a Community Interest Company focused on bringing the arts to marginalised communities. The organisation serves individuals affected by the criminal justice system, homelessness, addiction, and poverty, using theatre, storytelling, and workshops to inspire change.

Its flagship solo show, Something to Take Off the Edge, explores life in prison, addressing themes of friendship, addiction, literacy, and mental health. The show is performed in prisons, hostels, and community centres, often followed by Q&A sessions and creative writing workshops.

The organisation also runs spoken word performances and workshops, empowering participants to build confidence, develop skills, and express themselves.

Future plans include expanding tours and enhancing workshops.

Working Chance is the UK’s only employment charity for women with convictions. With our help, no woman will be held back by her past, and will get the support, encouragement and opportunities she needs to rebuild her life and thrive.

We support women leaving the criminal justice system to develop the confidence, skills and self-belief they need to overcome any barriers to their employment, find jobs and build careers.

We work with businesses of all sizes across all industries to find opportunities for women that align with their skills and aspirations.

Since 2009, Working Chance has supported thousands of women into employment and many more on their journeys towards financial independence. To women with convictions, a job is more than an income - it means a future where she and her family can flourish.

X-Ceed Transition's key purpose is to benefit the public. Our core aims are to be the bridge for change, where possible, by providing a service which will achieve the following:
- The prevention or relief of poverty
- The advancement of education
- The advancement of religion
- The advancement of health or the saving of lives
- The relief of those in need, by reason of age, ill-health, disability, financial hardship or other disadvantages.

We also provide the following services;
- Meeting at the gate
- Accommodation
- Support with independence living
- Mentoring
- Spiritual growth for those who make the request

Yellow Ribbon Community Chaplaincy works with people coming out of prison, seeking to be the bridge between prison and the community. Believing forgiveness and reconciliation are key to welcoming people out of prison and back into society we befriend, challenge and change the behaviours that lead back to prison. By offering one to one mentoring, building a relationship and addressing individual issues, we believe that lives can be turned around and positive outcomes achieved. We provide support for people on release from prison in Staffordshire, West Midlands, Shropshire, Hereford and Worcester, through one to one mentoring, guidance and practical help. Yellow Ribbon works with people seeking change in their lives, so that they do not return to prison. We meet clients in prison, listen and build a relationship. We aim to be the difference that makes people want to change their way of thinking and ultimately their lives.

We provide housing and support for young people, single adults and families across Somerset and North Somerset. We also provide tenancy advice, support and training to individuals who are in need. We can offer access to a variety of apprenticeships across the the hospitality and fitness sectors, offering opportunities to those who may require extra support to achieve their goals.

YMCA Exeter's Perspectives Project exists to empower, educate and mentor young men caught up in the Criminal Justice System.

Working with young men on community orders, suspended sentences or post-sentence supervision there are three key strands to our work:

Learning: We run small group community based courses for ex-offenders that focus on personal and interpersonal skills.

Mentoring: In association with Dorset, Devon and Cornwall CRC, we offer one to one mentoring support for young men on probation as part of their community order. Mentoring addresses: housing; food and finance; mental health and wellbeing; purpose and identity; support networks and contributing to society, including employment.

Therapeutic Activity: We run a Social and Therapeutic Horticulture Programme on our community allotment. This programme provides physical and mental space for enrichment and a supportive community through growing and sowing together. We also run cooking classes in the winter.

YMCA North Tyneside is a registered charity that supports
children and young people to be healthy, happy and connected. We focus specifically on young people through our supported accommodation (homeless young people with multiple and complex needs) and our youth and community work in local areas of high deprivation, some of the highest in the country. We support all ages in the community through our Nursery, Gym and Cafe. Our award winning (Youth Matter Awards, 2019) Supported Accommodation project has doubled in the last 18 months. We support young people who are homeless or at risk of homelessess across North Tyneside and neighbouring boroughs of Northumberland, South Tyneside and Newcastle. Our young people have multiple and complex needs such as mental health problems, learning disabilities, autistic spectrum disorders, attachment disorders ADHD and ADD. Many are young offenders and some have been in prison.

Empowering, rehabilitation and supporting the community, through:

- The promotion of civic responsibility and good citizenship
- Advancing education and personal development
- Promote life-long learning and the development of the individual capabilities, skills and understanding in subjects of educational value
- Creating programmes which will rehabilitate young offenders

You and Me Counselling provides young people/adults and their families with one to one, group, coaching, mentoring, teaching, tutoring, role modelling, information, advice, counselling and psychological therapies to enable psychological adjustment in young/adults offenders. We liaise and work alongside schools to identify and provide early intervention to potential young people at risk of developing anti-social, disruptive and truancy behaviour in schools that can lead to exclusions from schools.
Reintegrate offenders back into the community: We offer holistic support to adolescent offenders, with the aim enable psychological adjustment support mechanism that will. (1) Rebuild the young people/adult’s self-confidence, (2) restore their feeling of self-worth, and (3) prepare them for employment. You & Me Counselling are also looking to break the cycle of re-offending by restoring the young person adult’s relationship with their family and re-connecting them with their community.

We have an integrated EETEA model for reducing reoffending and reintegration of prisoners on release.

Engagement: We have been working in prisons as a prisoner led initiative since 2015 providing information on sentence planning and progression.

Education and Training: Our Academy provides fully funded soft skills critical thinking and personal development courses, as well as vocational NVQs, and apprenticeships to serving prisoners and prison leavers.

Employment: We offer a careers service for serving prisoners nearing end of sentence and prison leavers. Prisoners who enter our Pathways Programme receive a guaranteed offer of employment on release with one of our sponsoring employers.

Accommodation: We aim to ensure those on our Pathways Programme are financially supported into accommodation.

Mentoring: We provide 12 months post-release mentoring for Pathways graduates those who need it.

Coaching: We provide coaching to sponsoring employers staff on reintegration support needs.

Your Own Place works to prevent youth homelessness. This is done by providing tenancy support before and after getting their first place. We have a background in working with young offenders as being at significant risk of homelessness. We also offer peer mentoring to young people getting their first home, to see them through the challenges of setting up home for the first time. Our tenancy support can be delivered in groups or on a 1-2-1 basis.

Youth Action is an award-winning youth development agency providing a range of community-based services to meet the needs of its clients.
Having worked with a wide number of people over the past 10 years in a variety of mentoring roles, Youth Action now wishes to use its experience of working with the BAME sector and move into the offender rehabilitation arena. We are looking for organisations to partner with in this work.
We seek to influence policies to ensure that they are more youth friendly and therefore young people have better opportunities in life and have a greater voice in their community. We also passionately pursue the organising of bespoke opportunities to meet the varying needs of young people.

Youth Ink is a lived experience led charity operating in the heart of communities, we are experts by experience.
We work in co-production with young people stakeholders, adopting our innovative peer-led approach.

We use the power of peer networks to rehabilitate and to create safer communities for the future.
We enable young people caught up in the cycle of crime, addiction, mental health or care, to improve the services they receive. In turn, improving their life chances benefits them and their family, friends, neighbours, and the local community.

1) The rehabilitation of ex-offenders and the prevention of crime and anti social behaviour, in particular but not exclusively, by:
A) Facilitating their integration and constructive engagement in society;
B) The provision of support, information and advocacy for ex-offenders, those at risk of offending and the victims of crime; and
C) The promotion and development of best practice models of integrated offender management.
2) The promotion of social inclusion for the public benefit by preventing people from becoming socially excluded, relieving the needs of those people who are socially excluded and assisting them to integrate into society.

Established as a charity in 1986, YSS supports individuals who face multiple life challenges across Warwickshire and West Mercia. With a paid staff team of 50 and over 50 volunteers, YSS provides custody and community-based support to a wide variety of individuals and have particular experience and expertise of supporting those involved in the CJS and those most poorly served by public and statutory services.
YSS services include 1:1, intensive, holistic support to veterans in the CJS; those experiencing familial imprisonment; appropriate adult service; targeted Early Help; as well as supporting people into accommodation on release from prison.

We aim to be a voice for prisoners suffering discrimination and to advocate for reforms within the wider Criminal Justice System to meet the spirit and practice of human rights legislation. We aim to create a legacy for Zahid Mubarek which will protect human rights and provide opportunities for others to lead useful and productive lives.

We Provide Services to disengaged young people and adults. We aim to provide alternative courses for entering work or further education in the STEM and Art Sectors. We provide also 3D printing,3D scanning and 3D design services and classes. Our aim is to transform lives trough TEAMS (Technology, Engendering, Arts, Maths and Science).

In 2013 the Ambition South West Consortium was selected by the National Offender Management Service with the European Social Fund to develop a viable third sector offer to support large scale resettlement programmes for those who have offended.

The NOMS ESF funded SW Enhanced consortium consists of

Construction Youth Trust
Barnardo’s
1625 Independent People
Weston College
Learning Partnership West

and developed from and works in consultation with the Youth Justice Board SW Resettlement Consortium. This includes representatives from police, Youth Offending Teams, the Secure Estate, Probation and the Third sector.

The activities of the Ambition South West Consortium are designed to meet the needs of the present generation, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. We are committed to the preventative agenda and pick up from the end of custody provision to stop individuals from falling through the cracks and provide them with continuity.

CESI is a company limited by guarantee, dedicated to promoting social justice. It delivers research, develops innovative policy solutions and organises events and training. It also runs the European Offender Employment Forum and is particularly interested in developing resettlement solutions around housing, employment and drugs-related issues.

Community Change Foundation is registered charity dedicated to improving the lives of young people within the local community by providing mentoring based support in both one-to-one and group settings. We use a holistic, resilience based mentoring model to empower the people we work with to make positive choices about their future, improving not only their own lives but those of the people in the communities around them. We are presently working in a number of schools across Greater Manchester delivering one-to-one support to pupils at risk of school exclusion, as well as running focused group work programmes to improve behaviour, achievement and engagement centered around a number of issues including: drug awareness, peer influence and the realities of life in a gang.

We run a variety of other services. For more information please contact our office.