Chain Reaction

Aim

Digital skills for people leaving prison to support career development.

High re-offending rates are damaging, costly and harmful to our whole society. The best way to reduce re-offending is to enable people leaving prison to find suitable accommodation and meaningful employment and to sustain positive relationships. These three pillars are crucial to each person's identity and successful integration into society. We know from personal experience the support that is needed for prison leavers and have seen the difference this will make.

We are developing a programme of post release support to improve people's digital skills and help them to find work because this is a key step to success. People leaving prison are missing out on job opportunities and career development because they do not have the necessary digital skills to thrive in today's world.

We have prepared a package of training sessions which can be delivered individually or in small groups to people who need to quickly improve their digital skills, for study and career opportunities. These include :

• understanding digital security, 
• managing your digital identity, 
• safe online transactions, 
• academic digital skills
• technical proficiency with standard software packages,
• using a range of devices.

Because these programmes have been developed in conjunction with people who have successfully navigated their release from prison, we have incorporated lots of relevant content to make sure the delivery can be tailored to the Education, Training and Employment pathways that people have chosen. We have also sourced reonditioned laptops which we can provide on long-term loan to our students.

And as the programme develops, we will recruit and train prison leavers to deliver the sessions - supporting employment for the very people we are targeting. This leads to the Chain Reaction of service users becoming the service providers.

This project successfully funded on 15th December 2021