Our calls ahead of the 2024 Election

Expanding the Pupil Premium available for disadvantaged children in the early years and during school years to include 16-18 year olds would allow targeted extra support to tackle the barriers holding disadvantaged young people back. Additional focused funding of £1000 per disadvantaged 16, 17, and 18 year old student would benefit around 750,000 additional young people helping close the educational achievement gap and giving everyone the chance to learn without limits.

There is a backlog of children and young people waiting for an Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plan. All children and young people who need an EHC Plan should have one issued within the 20-week time scale. This should be alongside more investment so schools can offer children and young people the help they need.

Young people are increasingly struggling with their mental health. This is especially prevalent amongst 16-19 year olds. We would like to see a mental health professional in all education settings up to 19, including Alternative Provision and further education settings to ensure young people can get the help they need at the earliest opportunity.

One in seven young people in England don’t achieve Level 2, the equivalent of five GCSEs at grade 4 or above by the age of 19. This is even worse for disadvantaged young people. Level 2 qualifications are critical stepping stones into work or further/higher education for young people we work with and beyond yet many have been under threat. We need a broad range of high-quality Level 2 qualifications to provide pathways for young people into further learning and work.

Young people we work with experienced first-hand the scale of the digital divide during Covid-19 with significantly reduced opportunities due to a lack of access to digital devices and data. We want to see a Government guarantee that every disadvantaged young person has access to sufficient data and an appropriate learning device; all education professionals have appropriate digital skills; and all education providers have the required digital infrastructure.

Taking early action to prevent young people becoming NEET is critical to avoiding the long-term impact on job prospects, earnings and heath that not being in education, employment or training can have. We want to see a Young Person’s Guarantee that ensures a long term strategy to tackle youth unemployment and ensure no young person is left behind. In 2023 the Youth Employment Group set out a clear plan for tackling youth unemployment in the form the Young Person’s Guarantee, which includes early intervention and support for young people at risk of and those who do become NEET.

We know that once children and young people are drawn into the criminal justice system they can feel labelled and stigmatised, which can then be difficult to break away from. In addition, we know that having a criminal record can hold people back from moving on with their lives and have a lifelong impact, on education and their working lives. Providing support, alternative activities and raising aspirations should be prioritised over punitive sanctions for anti-social behaviour.

Supported housing should be available for every person and family that needs it. Alongside this we need to tackle poor quality supported housing and ensure good quality homes and support for those who need them.

Every month, hundreds of people are released from prison homeless and many more leave with insecure or only a temporary bed. Two-thirds of people who are released homeless reoffend within a year – a cycle of cell street repeat.

Without a home to go to on release from prison it is virtually impossible to get a job, start substance misuse of mental heath support, build back positive relationships, or reintegrate back into and contribute positively to society. We know from the people we support that leaving prison without somewhere to live is simply setting people up to fail. For people leaving prison who, as a last resort, are placed in 12 week temporary accommodation, a lack of move-on accommodation risks simply delaying homelessness by 12 weeks if they have nowhere to move onto.

Following a stay in supported housing or other transitional accommodation, too often people find they are unable to move on to independent accommodation, faced with a lack of availability of suitable accommodation or inflexible benefit rules. Through no fault of their own, this leaves people stuck in supported accommodation at a higher cost to the taxpayer when they are ready and able to move on, also creating a bottleneck which prevents other people from being able to get the support they need.

We need to move beyond the rhetoric and clearly define our approach to crime, the purpose of prison and how we deliver an evidence-led justice system that is fit for the future, focused on rehabilitation and which creates safer communities for us all.

A Royal Commission on criminal justice would be a way of bringing together political parties and experts in criminal justice both through learnt and lived experience, to set out a long-term plan to build an effective criminal justice system.

To reduce reoffending and give people the chance to turn their lives around, prisons must have a relentless focus on rehabilitation.

People we support through our justice services tell us how prisons do very little to help people to turn their lives around on release and that tackling high levels of overcrowding needs to be a priority as this makes rehabilitation almost impossible.

They identify key areas for improvement in prisons:

• • Purposeful activity and a real working day –taking part in meaningful education, learning a trade or skills and being in work while in prison all play important roles in helping people turn their lives around, prepare for release, and provide purpose. Yet around half of people in prison don’t have any purposeful activity. Jobs and education in prison should be available to everyone and the working day should reflect the reality of a working day outside prison to ensure we best prepare people for release. Everyone who is eligible for ROTL (Release on Temporary Licence) should be given the opportunity to work in the community, pay back to society and save for release.

• • Mental health in prison– People in prison have significantly higher rates of poor mental health than in the community with high rates of self-harm, suicide, depression and anxiety. Yet too many people leave prison with their mental health problems unaddressed. People in prison need to be able to access the mental health treatment and support they need during their prison sentence. And prison staff play a critical role in the day to day engagement with people in prison and so they must be given ongoing training in mental health and support to help drive a culture where mental health is prioritised.

Short prison sentences are less effective than alternatives in the community at reducing reoffending. They often cause more disruption to people already living chaotic lives and can lead to losing a home, a job, and social support which can all help someone turn their life around.

We need to introduce legislation as a matter of urgency to increase the use of community alternatives instead of short prison sentences and ensure the Probation Service has sufficient resources and support to deliver this.

Everyone should have the best chance at a second chance when they are released from prison. Having somewhere to live and the means to support both themselves and their family is the most basic of what people need, but all too often people leave prison without a stable place to live, unemployed and feeling lost and without hope.

By strengthening the focus on rehabilitation and the commitment to put in place the basics, we know that more people will get a real second chance.

• Develop a network of Prison Departure Lounges – the day of release can be overwhelming and if the barriers are too high people leaving prison can be swept back into old networks and patterns of behaviour. A network of Prison Departure Lounges in every prison that releases people to the community would provide a one-stop-shop for people as they are released where they could meet their probation officer, make calls to the local housing team or the DWP and set up appointments, meet family, charge their mobile phone, and pick up any basic essentials to help them get through the first few days. These are basic but essential things and having this support on release can make all the difference to ensuring that people have the best chance of building positive futures.

• Ensure people have immediate access to financial resources – We must ensure that people can make a claim for Universal Credit before release so they are able to access financial resources immediately on release and not left struggling to get by.

• Strengthen the role of the voluntary sector – many voluntary sector organisations deliver critical services to people during their time in prison and on release. The voluntary sector is well placed to build trust and rapport with people in the justice system and deliver high impact support. Services should be centred around the person rather than centred around artificial barriers that commissioning structures can create.