Directory

Our Service operates in 5 prisons across the North East. We offer prisoners a specialist housing, debt advice and advocacy service. We also offer prisoners training courses in budgeting including benefit changes, dealing with debt and practicalities of housing options. The Service enagages prisoners to be peers to assist with delivering training and advice.

This organisation provides specialist housing and homelessness advice and advocacy for clients in eight prison sites across Yorkshire and Humberside.

SherlockAI is a not-for-profit CIC who passionately believe in supporting those engaged with the criminal justice system to create better lives for themselves and our communities. We are a team of people with lived experience of the criminal justice system, Probation workers and people who have years of experience within the third sector. We combine this experience to provide excellent service to our partners. Our goal is to leverage emerging AI technology to create better outcomes for people engaged with the criminal justice system.

​But we're just getting started. We want to evolve SherlockAI into a personalised life coach companion to help each individual achieve better outcomes. We do that better as a team working with partners.

Shewise is a charity. We work with women from diverse communities and backgrounds; enabling, assisting, and inspiring them to believe in their abilities, to flourish in both new and existing businesses and in employment. We work with women and girls from all walks of life regardless of age, ethnicity, and religion.
We support them through the provision of guidance, casework support, counselling, advice, outreach, and signposting along with our training programs that help them to build their confidence, self-esteem, positive self-identity, and develop their skills enabling them to make real positive changes in their lives.

Siarad Da is a non profit making organisation, founded by Dr April May Kitchener as a response to a demand for specialist training.
Siarad Da’s critical aim is to promote understanding and awareness of the hidden disability that many people live with, particularly those in our CJS or experiencing school and social exclusion. Receptive, expressive and pragmatic language disorders impact on all aspects of a person’s life, often presenting as challenging and inappropriate behaviour. We support:
– professionals to develop extra tools that will enable them to be more effective in their communication and management of clients
– individuals struggling to appropriately express their needs and to support them to better understand consequences and expectations
– families to better understand the difficulties of loved ones, providing help and guidance to put in place strategies to use in their homes to develop clear communication

SIFA Fireside is a dynamic Birmingham based charity which works to tackle homelessness and alcohol misuse. We also deliver restorative justice and assist ex-offenders and other marginalised groups to access employment, education and volunteering. We are based in Digbeth, and work with people aged 18 and over with no upper age limit. The Drop In is open Monday-Friday from 9am until 1pm. Breakfast is served from 9am-10am, and lunch is served from 12pm until 12.45pm. We run a shorter session on Saturday and Sunday from 10.30am-11.30am. No food is served at weekends but tea, coffee and biscuits are on offer. Restorative justice aims to repair the harm caused by offending. This service is open to anyone over 18, victim or offender. The only exclusions are serious offences (murder, sex crimes and domestic violence). The Changing Lives team work with ex-offenders, providing support to find work, training or volunteer placements. We also offer a job club and outreach support

Sing Inside takes day long singing workshops into prisons around the country, working with groups of student volunteers and creating a larger choir with participants from within the prisons we visit. We teach a series of songs by ear to everyone at the same time, avoiding distancing prison volunteers from external volunteers, and everyone performs together at a short concert in the afternoon. our workshops aim to encourage self-confidence and self-worth, and a belief in the positive impact prison residents can have on group activities, by allowing them a liberating creative and social space in which to work towards a goal. Sing Inside utilises the power of group singing to draw together a community quickly, improving relationships between residents and external volunteers, as well as including prison staff. Our workshops encourage faith in supportive external communities and hope for positive contribution to group activities upon release through group singing.

Founded in 1977 by a group of rough sleepers, SHP is now a large London based charity which supports approximately 7,000 vulnerable people a year. In addition to large generic floating support services which support peoples holistic needs, SHP provides a range of specialist floating supoprt and accommodation based services to people with: Offending histories (including services dedicated to PPO's and those subject to MAPPA), mental health issues (including complex forensic needs) and substance misuse issues. In addition SHP provides Housing Advice Workers (HAWk) to 11 Probation areas accross London. SHP also provides floating support and accommodation services to young people as well as Aftercare, Recovery and employment services.

Sixty-One is a Bristol-based charity that supports people with a criminal conviction to lead meaningful lives away from crime. We also equip individuals, churches, charities and businesses to provide the relational and community-based support that can empower someone with a conviction to live free from crime.

MentorMe is our biggest project and pairs rigorously-trained volunteer mentors from over 40 local Christian congregations, with men or women with a criminal conviction who are:

- Resident in Bristol

- Ready to move away from criminal activity

- Motivated to work on positive identified goals

Mentoring is non-faith based and is open to people of all faiths and none.

MentorMe receives referrals from statutory and voluntary-sector agencies within prison and in the community.

We also have a strong network of churches across our area that host mid-week welcoming spaces for people with a criminal conviction.

Skillsmax aims to assist those furthest from the local community by providing relevant and effective activities, which strengthen the individual's social life and employability skills.

Skillsmax's vision is to:
• Equip individuals with knowledge and skills to make better informed decisions
• Strengthen individuals' ability to manage changes in their lives
• Increase individuals' passion for learning
• Maximise individuals' ability to engage in activities which are rewarding
• Promote individuals’ strengths to local employers with growth plans

Our 4 main business activities are:
• Services to local job seekers
• Services to local employers
• A central hub for support agencies to refer individuals
• A central hub to provide a signposting service for those who require specialist assistance

We support people of all backgrounds, cultures and ages, through a variety of country-wide running programmes.

Small Woods is a national charity, working with woodland owners and managers to bring their woodlands into management. We run training programmes in coppicing, sustainable woodland management, coppice crafts and other woodland skills, and social forestry, as well as a coppice apprenticeship scheme; we also run projects in coppice restoration. Small Woods is an OCN-accredited training establishment, developing social enterprise. Past projects include the Tick Wood project, mainly involving male probationers, and the Amazon Woman project, working with female probationers.

SMART have been developing and delivering innovative drug and alcohol services since 1996 when we launched an Arrest Referral Service in Oxford. We have grown to become one of the most trusted providers of recovery services in the South East.

We believe everyone has the ability to change. True innovation starts with listening to the people we work with. Our client is instrumental in designing, implementing and evaluating their own recovery journey; in collaboration with their family, their community, our workers and partners.

Reaching and maintaining recovery requires much more than absence of drugs or alcohol; we are experienced in meeting the many challenges that people face; such as access to secure housing, education and employment opportunities, and a supportive community.

Smart Works Charity dresses and trains unemployed women for success at their job interview. Every woman who comes to Smart Works receives a complete outfit of clothes and accessories (hers to keep) and one to one interview coaching. This works - in the last 12 months, 60% of the women we could contact went on to succeed at interview. Once a woman has a job, we also invite her back to give her a working wardrobe for her return to work.

All the clothes in our beautiful wardrobe are donated from individuals or retailers, and all our service is delivered by skilled volunteers who regularly give up their time to help style and coach our clients.

This year we will help over 3000 women from our 7 locations across the UK - North and West London, Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Reading and Newcastle. It is out mission to take this fantastic service to as many women as possible, whilst maintaining the impact and quality of our service.

We use the waterways to combat the effects of social exclusion, and we have a particular interest in the preparation for release of people coming to the end of their sentence.

Social Enterprise Acumen CIC is a specialist social enterprise support agency. It supports entrepreneurs to establish trading businesses that address social needs. It offers charities, community organisations and social enterprises expertise in bid writing, public procurement and capacity building.
It is the lead partner, coordinating the NOMS CFO-funded Social Enterprise Consortia Building Programme in the North East.

We provide technical support to people and organisations setting up work integration social enterprises and social firms to increase employment opportunities for people facing the most barriers to the labour market. This includes offenders, people with mental health problems and/or learning disabilities and people with drug or alcohol habits.

The Social Interest Group (SIG) was formed as a charity in 2014. Its sole aim is to be a vehicle to develop and strengthen the charities that are within it, so they in turn thrive and do social good. Our members include Penrose Options and Equinox Care.

As a Tier 2 provider for London CRC, we currently deliver the following high-performing services:

• Resettlement support to 6,000 men per year in 4 male prisons
• Community supervision of 2,500 men sentenced to less than 12 months, with our Responsible Officers based in every London borough
• Job Fairs that bring together a range of employers and trainers, providing service users a one-stop shop of live opportunities, CV and disclosure workshops and interview technique classes

Outside of our probation work, we deliver a wide range of residential and floating support services across London, Brighton and Bedfordshire, with a particular focus on mental health (including forensic), substance misuse and complex needs.

Social Justice Solutions (SJS) is passionate about challenging poverty and inequality. We work with like-minded organisations to create innovative solutions to social problems. We provide consultancy, business support, training and research that reduces crime and social exclusion. We share the values of the voluntary sector and support Clinks' aims. We have successfully supported many small voluntary organisations to secure grant funding by targeting appropriate funding sources and writing strong funding applications. We are interested in helping to develop an evidence base showing the impact of voluntary sector work to reduce crime and we do this in partnership with research specialists, such as the Hallam Centre for Community Justice at Sheffield Hallam University. We are currently involved in a number of evaluation projects commissioned by the Ministry of Justice and others.

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.

An award winning Leicestershire charity, established in 1986, we use arts, media and music activities to make positive life changes for disadvantaged young people by supporting them to develop creative, social and employability skills. For young people who lack opportunities or have challenges in their lives it can be hard to look forward to a positive future. Our projects help them get back on track when have gone wrong, build the confidence and resilience to change negative or risky behaviours, and progress to lead more fulfilling lives. Different agencies refer young people to our projects and our work responds to and tackles local and national issues such as anti-social behaviour and unhealthy lifestyles. We believe creativity gives young people more positive choices in their lives. We know it works because we have seen it happen.