Our Annual Report for 2024 highlights the strategy and decisions we’re taking to continue to support our service users and our financial statements.
Message from our Chair
Despite the very tough environment we were operating in, I ended my introduction to last year’s annual report on an optimistic note. I believed we were well placed to meet the challenges of the future, and we had the strategy, culture, and people to support the people who used our services in making real changes for the better of their lives.
So it has proved. It has indeed been another very challenging year, but as this report shows, we have been able to improve the quality and scale of our services while stabilising our financial position. I do not want that broadly positive picture of the organisation to detract from an understanding of how difficult things were for the people who used our services last year.
I try to meet as many of the people we support as I can, and of course, they all have a wide range of different needs: young people who have been struggling at school or who have left care; veterans still traumatised by their experiences; those finding relief in drugs and alcohol; men leaving prison without anywhere to stay.
But what they all have in common is a truly shocking level of poverty, both in absolute financial terms and poverty of the most basic services they could surely expect to support them: a safe place to live, mental health support, a place at school or college, functioning probation, and social services.
The work our staff does in these circumstances is truly extraordinary. For part of the year, I acted as the Board’s safeguarding lead. This required me to understand in detail some of the risks and vulnerabilities our service users faced – young people, for instance, whose lack of resources and other vulnerabilities potentially made them easy prey to ‘county lines’ (the drug trafficking networks that exploit young people as carriers). I saw how our staff were continually vigilant and worked with skill and dedication to pull together a picture that identified a young person at risk and then galvanised sometimes reluctant agencies to work together to keep the young people safe.
Our staff have faced their own economic pressures, and they too have sometimes struggled because they could not access the services they needed. We have worked hard to improve the way Nacro’s own systems and organisation supports them. We have a lot more to do to get this right but we are making progress, and I am extremely grateful to all our staff for their service and commitment.
It has been important to use the experience of the people we support and our staff to influence the national and local policies that impact them, and we have had some real success with this, ending the Friday release of prisoners, for instance, which made it even more difficult for them to access the services they need. These successes have been based on good, constructive relationships. We have been fortunate in the support we have had from our organisational partners and funders.
We recognise the pressures they are under, but we have been able to find common ground with the Ministry of Justice, other national government departments and agencies, health services, and local authorities to make the best use of resources to support some of the most vulnerable people they are responsible for.
Nacro is a complex organisation, and pulling all this together and providing the leadership the organisation needs is no easy task. Once again, I thank Nacro’s Board and senior management team for the leadership they provide. Board members are unpaid, and I recognise the heavy responsibilities they carry. Katie Martin resigned from the Board during the year, and I want to record my thanks to her. We were joined by five new Board members: Mian Langellier, Philippa Oldmeadow, Felicity Oswald, Melanie Walker and Maneer
Asfar, and they joined a strong team of established Board members. I look forward to working with them all.
We have many challenges ahead, but I believe we can face them with confidence.
Nick Hardwick
Chair
Message from our CEO
Being the Chief Executive of Nacro is a privilege and a constant reminder of the difference that good people can make. 2023/24 was a very difficult year in many ways, but no more so than for the thousands of people we help every year.
In all of the areas we work there were even greater challenges for people to keep their head above water, let alone get ahead and get on. The housing crisis worsened, prisons were even more full, local authorities
went bankrupt, social services stretched further, and the need for special educational support grew.
Through all of this, our staff are the point of calm, the reliable presence, the helping hand, the kind words and good advice, and the push to take on the next challenge. Every day in so many ways they keep hope alive, even when it is at its most challenging.
We have tried our best to provide our staff with the support they need. Despite the very real financial challenges we face we are investing in pay, in ICT, in new buildings and learning and development. We have tried to include them and involve them in the difficult choices we need to make, through our excellent EDI committee or our positive and constructive relationship with Unite, our recognised trade union.
We have put the people we support at the heart of the organisation, our Justice ExChange has been driving our policy and campaigning work, they came to our Board and told them what they wanted to see Nacro do.
We have built real and genuine partnerships across all sectors, whether with the many brilliant businesses that support our education centres, the charities working to deliver outstanding services or our commissioners such as the Ministry of Justice or Lincolnshire Council who work with us to adapt and change to the needs of the people we support.
I know that 2024/25 will be just as hard, or harder, but I also know that with the colleagues and board members we have we are set for the challenge.
Campbell Robb
Chief Executive Officer
Find out more
Learn more about our financial performance and the impact our work has had on our Service Users by downloading the full Annual Report 2024 here.