New services: Community Integration and Employment Projects
source: WAITS Team
published: 24 June 2024
Image Credit : FreeRangeStock - Unsplash
We are very pleased to announce the expansion of our services since April 2024. Thanks to new funding from National Lottery, we have relaunched and expanded our Community Integration Project (CIP) with the aim to support 100 women per year with a background of offending, or at risk of offending who have also experienced domestic abuse.
Without this intervention in place, many women released from prison relapse and re-enter harmful relationships and/or re-engage in coercive criminal activities; which often leads to reoffending or a prison sentence within 12 months or less of leaving prison.
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Without a resettlement intervention package in place they are more likely to reconnect with their coercive controlling ex-partners - influencers of past sobriety relapses often fuelled by domestic abuse and coercive criminal activities.
WAITS offers advocacy, practical support, counselling, access to housing, support regain child custody to break re-offending and domestic abuse cycles to women released from prison and those on probation dually affected by criminal coercion and domestic abuse.
We have match-funded this project with a Triangle Trust grant to support the same cohort of women to access employment through employability coaching and workshops. The Goals To Employment programme is a 10-week rolling programme, where participants are assigned a job coach and engage in training sessions to gain the confidence and skills to achieve their career aspirations.
Our employment coach will then match the skills of the recipient with agreed engaged external employment organisations. The WAITS’ employment coach will oversee the introductory meeting and ensure employee role, assigned tasks and key targets are agreed and implemented into a personalised employment training plan. The participants gain on the job work experience and gain financial independence to break the cycles of abuse and offending, enabling them to rebuild their lives.
