Parkhead Citizens Advice Bureau, Training Officer & Community Link (HMP Barlinnie)
Parkhead Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) has worked with prisoners and their families at HMP Barlinnie for almost 20 years. During this time, we have worked with people experiencing issues due to receiving a custodial sentence, leaving prison and or having a family member in prison. We identified the need to increase access to information and offer support to help prisoners improve their lives where possible, both during their sentence and when they’re preparing to return to the community.
We recently launched a new project in HMP Barlinnie (Improving Lives) in September 2022, funded by the National Lottery for 3 years. Our new project has allowed us to double our existing adviser availability for 1-2-1 appointments and recruit a new position of Training and Community Link Officer based in the Resource Hub at HMP Barlinnie on a full-time basis.
Our 1-2-1 appointments with our CAB adviser Chad, available to all prisoners in the Link Centre on request or accessed as a drop-in at the Resource Hub. Increased adviser availability has allowed the prisoners access to support as and when an issue/need has arisen. The increased presence has had a significant benefit in solving urgent/unexpected issues much faster and with the increased visibility of our drop-in service we have found it to be an extremely powerful tool in spreading the word, that help is available throughout the entire prison population.
I was recruited as a new team member for the position of Training and Community Link Officer to launch the new project. With a background in delivering an employability-based programme in HMP Addiewell, I was keen to get started. With the support of SPS staff, our new service was able to get off the ground a lot quicker than we had initially anticipated.
I have always had a keen interest in working with people within the criminal justice system to help them break the cycle of re-offending. With the right tools and support, I feel people are more equipped and capable to make better choices, have a better quality of life and become positive contributors to society.
In this new role with Parkhead Citizens Advice Bureau, I have been able to work with the people serving time in prison and encourage them to self-diagnose the issues and barriers they face, provide them with information, advice and support they can access and identify where they can take control over their lives and build resilience, which is a vital skill both in prison and to take out to the community once liberated.
A key part of the training officers’ role is to deliver workshops as drop-in sessions to prisoners visiting the resource hub during recreation time. The interest in the workshops has gone from strength to strength since the initial launch and the support from the prisoners at the regular focus groups has been crucial in identifying the topics and building the workshop content which has all been prisoner led.
Parkhead Citizens Advice Bureau Workshop Adverts within Prison:
In the initial 6 months of the project we have provided:
- 1-2-1 Holistic Advice – 203 prisoners with advice provided on 1010 different topics.
- Workshops – 111 workshop sessions delivered to 303 prisoners on the following topics:
- Family Support
- Identification
- Goal Setting & Creating Positive Habits
- Budgeting
- Master Your Mindset
- Credit Reports
- Focus Groups – 20 Groups all around the development of the project.
- Partnership Activities –
- 2 Rounds of an Employability Programme – Delivered with an SPS Officer project managing a group of partners to enhance the employability skills and opportunities for prisoners due for release.
- Creative Writing Project – Creative Change Collective brought us the unique opportunity of writing and producing a script for an audio infomercial to promote volunteering as a positive destination to prisoners on behalf of the briefs client – Volunteer Glasgow. Commissioned by Community Justice Glasgow, Creative Change Collective arranged for a highly experienced writer Chris Dolan to work with a team of prisoners and teach them brand new writing skills and support the team to fulfil the client brief. The client – Volunteer Glasgow also provided staff to assist with this unique project.
- Celebrating National Volunteers Week 2023 – In partnership with SPS and the Department for Work and Pensions we invited organisations to visit the Resource Hub in an exhibition-style event to meet and talk with prisoners across 5 days.
The Event stats:
- 602 – Prisoner Engagements with Partners
- 32 – Partners Attended
- Events – 6 Events in total to increase partnership activity and awareness and prisoner engagement.
The workshop participation has been extremely promising, all prisoners are issued with a personalised certificate to recognise their participation which has been a key factor in increasing continued participation in future workshops. All workshop participants are offered the opportunity to provide honest and non-judgemental feedback that has been extremely positive.
Although the project is still in its infancy, we are keen to push forward with another key objective by training prisoners to volunteer in the prison as CAB Peer Mentors. The volunteers will provide an important role in providing triage-style support with clear guidelines on how to assist individuals looking for support and advice. They will offer their peers topic-specific information packs to resolve issues that can be self-managed and support on how to use the packs. This will not replace the need to see a CAB adviser but will support individuals who can solve an issue on their own but currently don’t have the resources or access to the information required to do so, we aim to empower the prisoners to feel they can manage certain issues on their own comfortably.
As a team, we are very grateful for the support we’ve received from SPS, the partners, and most importantly the prisoners, for those who want to make the change they are helping us help them.
Interested in our work and want to know more about our prison work please contact me at victoria.byrne@parkheadcab.org.uk
