Clinks Volunteering Guides

Clinks has published a series of guides designed to support organisations in their day-to-day work with offenders. The guides have been developed with the expertise of Volunteering England, Charities Evaluation Services, and the Mentoring and Befriending Foundation.

Targeted at those who involve volunteers, or provide mentoring and befriending services to offenders and ex-offenders, these guides are designed to support any organisation whether they are already established or just setting up.

Service User Involvement

Written by service users, this guide provides a structured and accessible introduction to involving offenders and ex-offenders in your work, including examples of good practice, checklists and signposting to further information and support.

Setting up a Project

This helps support organisations who are setting up a mentoring or befriending project to work with offenders and ex-offenders. The guide goes through the different elements that need to be considered when planning for a new service and gives interesting case studies of organisations working with offenders and ex-offenders.

Managing Volunteers

The purpose of this guide is to help ensure that organisations working with offenders and ex-offenders use volunteers well. There is a lot of good practice in the Criminal Justice System of involving volunteers. However, there is also inconsistency in the way that volunteers are recruited, managed and reimbursed.

Demonstrating Effectiveness

This guide aims to support organisations working with offenders and ex-offenders to demonstrate their effectiveness. The guide goes through the different steps that need to be considered when planning to demonstrate effectiveness with a particular focus on when volunteers are contributing to the delivery of a service.

Quality Standards

The purpose of this guide is to help support organisations working with offenders and exoffenders to gain an external quality standard for their work with offenders, ex-offenders, or their families. This guide explains what external quality standards are, why you would consider getting one, and then goes through the quality standards that are currently available and allows the reader to select which one is best for their organisation.

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