Directory

Our primary purpose is to provide support and training to ex-offenders and their families, improving their quality of life and thereby reducing the rate of reoffending. The mechanics through which our aims are reached is largely via peer-mentoring from qualified and knowledgeable members of the organisation who are experts in their chosen field. Presently, Second Chance (UK) provides the following services:
• Job finding skills
• Training in computer hardware
• Legal counseling

Seetec has over 29 years experience of delivering employability and skills programmes across the UK, including DWP Work Programme, Work Choice, SFA Skills Support for the Unemployed, Apprenticeships and NOMS ESF Programme. We have supported 100,000 customers in the last year engaging a wide range of customer groups, including ex-offenders through the Work Programme (across 3 CPAs nationally) and through our NOMS ESF contract. Through delivery of these programmes, Seetec has developed strong partnerships with over 500 framework partners nationally that provide support and guidance to customers with multiple needs. Provision includes support for Local Authorities (LAs) and voluntary sector organisations.

Our service operates in 12 prisons across the North West region. We offer prisoners a specialist housing, finance and debt advice and advocacy service; we also offer prisoners training courses in budgeting, dealing with debt, and housing rights. Jeff Holmes (Administrator, Shelter North West Regional Office) can also be contacted on 0344- 515 1670.

Shelter offer free, confidential and independent advice and information to people with housing related problems. This includes services delivered under the MoJ's Dynamic Framework in Yorkshire and The Humber and East Midlands. Shelter deliver accommodation interventions to service users and expert advice and training to professionals, in order to support people subject to probation supervision to resettle in their communities.

Shelter Cymru is a national people and homes charity, with a vision that everyone in Wales should have a decent and affordable home. Shelter Cymru’s mission is to improve people’s lives through our advice and support services and through training, education and information work. Through our policy, research, campaigning and lobbying, we help overcome the barriers that stand in the way of people in Wales having a decent affordable home. Shelter Cymru has a track record in working with prisoners, ex-prisoners and people on probation having delivered housing advice partnerships with North Wales and Dyfed Powys Probation Services and delivering Prison Link Cymru in North Wales, a Welsh Government funded service focussing on avoiding homelessness on prison release.

Society Matters cic is a community interest company, formed in 2012 to help finance and support the work and services of Citizens Advice Gateshead. Citizens Advice Gateshead is an independent charity offering free, independent, impartial, and confidential advice to everyone who lives or works in Gateshead.

Society Matters cic strives for a fair society for all by designing and delivering unique programmes and services for society to organisations across all sectors, who want to ‘make their mark.’ This includes training on social welfare benefits, guidance on making your corporate social responsibility policy a reality, and a renowned, low cost, comprehensive legal advice for all aspects of working life, including case work and representation service.

To provide the advice people need for the problems they face.
And equally:
To improve the policies and practices that affect people’s lives.

The advice that we provide is free, confidential, impartial and independent.

St Helens District Citizens Advice Bureau provides specialist benefits, debt, employment and housing advice. In addition, it provides advice on a range of other issues including consumer, health, education, relationships and many others. We have outreaches in the community and provide advice sessions at the Scott Clinic in Merseyside.

The St Vincent de Paul Society (or as it is often known the SVP) is an international Christian voluntary organisation dedicated to tackling poverty and disadvantage by providing practical assistance to those in need irrespective of ideology, faith, ethnicity, age or gender. Our community support projects provide a wide variety of support to those in need including Community Shops, Furniture Re-Use Projects and Advice and Support Centres. We also work with Community Payback in Yorkshire, Manchester and the North East. We run a diverse range of projects accessible to offenders and ex-offenders; these include specialist level debt and housing advice, counselling and support, community learning including English as a foreign language, literacy and numeracy courses employability skills, general welfare benefits and immigration advice. In Newcastle we operate two Approved Premises.

We provide legal advice and support to the public in north Staffordshire, specialising in the main areas of social welfare law: welfare benefits, debt, housing and employment. We also offer immigration advice, advice to refugees and people seeking asylum, Gypsies and travellers and the victims of hate crime. We provide money advice and fincnacial capability training to offenders in partnership with the probation service through our MAS funded advice service. We also work with women offenders at the Chepstow House one stop shop for women offenders in Stoke-on-Trent.

Stepping Stones is a unique service in Luton for women offering support on a variety of issues such as drugs/alcohol, domestic abuse, mental health, problems related to offending or re-offending in a safe, warm and supportive environment. We also have an Ofsted Registered Childcare Service so children can be looked after in a safe environment whilst their mothers/carers access support. We work in Partnership with BeNCH CRC to divert women from custody, reduce women’s offending and divert women from the criminal justice system. We offer a huge variety of comprehensive services. We are a holistic womens service that understands and takes every aspect of women’s lives into account. We use gender-responsive guiding principles in creating an environment that reflects and understands the realities of the lives of women that addresses and responds to their strengths and challenges.

Working together to improve the quality of women’s lives in Stockport.

Stockport Women's Centre provides services to any women who is in need of support. This includes women who have experienced or are experiencing domestic violence. Due to the nature of the work membership is restricted to women only.

The Women’s Centre provides the following services:

* Counselling & Psychotherapy
* Complementary Therapies
* Self Help Groups
* Domestic Abuse Drop in
* Legal Advice Surgery
* Education Courses (Numeracy & Literacy)
* Freedom Programme

Mission Statement
The Women’s Centre will support, empower and educate to improve the wellbeing and physical and mental health of women, enabling them to have improved life chances for themselves and their families.

We provide free, independent debt advice, energy advice and financial education. A registered charity, we are dedicated to helping people out of financial hardship and on with their lives.

Thames Reach has a track record in working with people with current and past history of offending. Our work with vulnerable adults offers support and solutions to people at risk of homelessness, substance use, offending, poor mental and physical health, including:

• Staff and volunteers work directly with rough sleepers on the street. We provide emergency assistance and encourage movement into accommodation.

• Our hostels supply a safe, temporary place to stay for people who find themselves homeless and with multiple and complex problems, including successful initiatives such as Psychologically Informed Environments (PIE).

• Our supported housing projects provide accommodation with assistance for people with specialist needs, including offending, mental health and/or substance misuse problems.

• We support vulnerable people in their own rented accommodation, and provide pathways and response in accessing this type of accommodation, including the provision of accommodation

The Corbett Network for Prisoner Re-Integration is a coalition of charities, social enterprises, CICs, non-profit organisations and businesses with a social mission who work with those in prison and after release. These decision-makers are dedicated to reducing re-offending by helping people with convictions find and keep a job. Members also offer mentoring, coaching, training, and on-going support.

We support women, men and children affected by domestic abuse through a variety of specialist services. Our Refuge Services offer safe emergency accommodation for up to 14 families; over the last reporting year (April 2013 to March 2014) Refuge Services supported 28 women, 6 men and 37 children. Our innovative Children’s Services team reaches out to children and young people through a range of ways including group work, schools projects and one to one support. Children's Services supported around 3,500 children and young people over the last year. Our Advocacy and Outreach Service works intensively with women and men in the community to reduce the risks they face from domestic abuse and supported 1125 clients over the last year. We also reach out through Training Services and awareness workshops which trained 385 professionals in the last year.

The Howard League works for a safe society where fewer people are victims of crime. It believes that offenders must make amends for what they have done and change their lives. Our mission is to promote community interventions that make a person take responsibility and live a law-abiding life. The Howard League campaigns for less crime, safer communities and fewer people in prison.

THOMAS provides residential and community-based substance misuse rehabilitation, recovery and resettlement services in Blackburn, Salford, Lancashire and Manchester. We work closely with prisons, CRCs and the National Probation Service. We have a residential rehabilitation unit, Witton Bank, Blackburn, and a PHE funded “Gateways” abstinent recovery house for men leaving prison. In Salford we have a residential rehabilitation house for men and one for women, with move on abstinent houses. We are fully CQC and Supporting People compliant and have NHS Information Governance Toolkit level 3.
We support 500 people at a time. We have 20 years experience of working with offenders, many of whom are prolific and persistent offenders, with sustained addictions and complex life stories. We have a large network of peer mentors, who have completed programmes with us, and are now supported to mentor others just beginning recovery. Some go on to work for THOMAS, including at management level.

Tomorrow’s Women is a Charity for all women aged 18+ to make positive lifestyle changes. Working with female offenders, and those on the periphery, it is committed to reducing offending in adult women.
An award winning charity, with a multi-agency approach they support women through targeted interventions to address underlying support areas for each woman.
Open Monday-Friday 9am - 3:30pm they work across Wirral and Cheshire West & Chester. TW have achieved outstanding outcomes with women into employment, recovery and away from (re)offending through service engagement, learning opportunities & addressing behaviours in an all-female safe community hub.
Tomorrow's Women hosts the National Probation Service & Merseyside Community Rehabilitation Company whose dedicated team of Offender Managers supervise all female offenders subject to Community Orders and Licensed Conditions.
Referrals can be made via professionals or women can self-refer.

To ensure that transgender prisoners are protected

We are a newly founded CIC who are working towards creating The Unseen Victims Project. This initiative has been created due to the founder writing a book discussing the very seldom discussed problems associated with suddenly finding yourself supporting a person either accused of or jailed for their criminality. The projects scope and ambition is to offer a dedicated telephone line and heavy promotion of the various platforms to access information and advice where members of the public can access real time information and not rely on social media groups. The CICs founders have over 30's combined lived and learned experience of the multifaceted problems that loved ones face. The stigma attached to supporting loved ones through a prison journeys as real as it ever was. The Ministry of Justice place a huge amount of emphasis on strong family bonds being instrumental to successful rehabilitation, yet very little support is actually available. We want to change this...