What is the need for the project across Derbyshire?

In March 2006 Baroness Corston conducted a review of women in the criminal justice system who have particular vulnerabilities.  Her report said a radical new approach was needed to treat women both holistically and individually – a woman-centred approach.

One of the key recommendations of the Corston report was that women’s centres be developed, expanded and increasingly used as an alternative to imprisonment. Corston wanted most women with convictions to serve their sentence in the community, regularly attending these centres to access one-stop-shop support services, such as counselling and advice about housing and debt.

The Female Offender Strategy (2018) strongly supported the Corston Report and recognised that many women who offend experience chaotic lifestyles involving substance misuse, mental health problems, homelessness, and offending behaviour – these are often the product of a life of abuse and trauma.

What the Turn Around project involves

Women’s Work’s expertise in supporting women who are vulnerable means that it is well placed to support a female-led approach towards rehabilitation.

We are contracted by the Ministry of Justice to provide Women’s Services across Derbyshire to women in the Criminal Justice System.. Our services address offending behaviour and preventing re-offending, offering an alternative to custody. We provide a package of 1-1 support and group programmes, aimed to address criminogenic needs and to improve compliance with orders and licenses.

Women’s Services are delivered at three levels: Low, Medium & High Complexity and cover eight themes: Accommodation; Education, Training and Employment; Finance, Benefits & Debt; Dependency and Recovery; Family & Significant Other; Lifestyle & Associates; Emotional Wellbeing; and Social Inclusion.

A women’s journey may start in prison where up to 6 support sessions can be offered around identified needs for Accommodation and Social Inclusion. In addition a release plan is jointly agreed with the Probation Practitioner, Substance Misuse teams and other specialist agencies. Relationship building is key so we aim for the same staff member that visits in prison to continue the support in the community around the full range of identified criminogenic needs.

Alternatively, women may be given Community Sentences by the courts.  Instead of going to prison the woman is referred by her Probation Practitioner into our service for support around a range of the identified needs listed above.

At our centre we also offer many wrap-around services and all staff are trained to deliver holistic and person-centred support. There are a number of Women’s Work projects which can offer ongoing support once women have completed their orders, reducing the chances of re-offending. Often our support is the first time that the women attending have had the opportunity and dedicated support to address the issues which are holding them back in life and which led to their offending behaviour in the first place