Young Offenders: Employment and Training

Baroness Stedman-Scott Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott]

My Lords, the subject of this debate is critical to the young people of our country who find themselves being released from custody. I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Healy, on securing this debate. My heart beats in concert with her on this, because it is a very important issue. I must declare that I am CEO of Tomorrow’s People. I hope that the work we are doing with young people gives me some insight into how we need to support them when leaving custody; and, even more importantly, supporting them before they get there in the first place.

I am conscious of the work done by others in this field. There is the National Grid, Blue Sky and the Prince’s Trust to name but a few. The statistics of National Grid have been well voiced this evening, so I will not go over them. Blue Sky develops social enterprises for people to work in. It operates contracts and, therefore, is trading. Its concept is “not for profit” but it would call itself a “not for loss” organisation. Certainly, it makes sure that it pays its way in providing invaluable support to young people. The Prince’s Trust, which is well known to all of us, helps young people to start their own businesses.

My experience of these young people is that they are clever and talented. They are just waiting for someone to help them realise their talent and—perhaps I am old-fashioned—to love them so that they can blossom. A great deal is being done to help people make an effective transition from custody but, as the founder of the Salvation Army, William Booth, said when his son was waxing lyrical about the wonderful work that the Salvation Army was doing:

“Bramwell, that and better will do”.

We may be doing good things, but there are more and better things that we can do.

In preparation for my contribution, I read the Local Government Association’s paper on the resettlement of offenders, which lists well the key elements that young people need to make an effective transition from custody. I know that the debate today is focused on finding employment and training on release but other critical things need to be in place if young people are to get the best from any development opportunity. Indeed, when we see what they are, we start to appreciate why things do and do not work.

Those important components include accommodation and long-term mentoring. Let us not work with them for just a few moments; we must stick with them for a year or even longer. We should ensure that they have an acceptable attained level in at least literacy, numeracy and general education. They should also be given some personal development and vocational training. At the heart of the key elements is that these young people are prepared for the world of work and that they are given work experience. Much has been said about work experience and how, sometimes, people are abused but it gives an opportunity for young people to go to an employer and show what they are able to do in the working environment. Most importantly, all these things need to be packaged so that they can get and keep a job.

Recently, I have spoken to a number of young people who are sofa surfing. They go from one house to another sleeping on the sofa. From one day to the next, they never know where they are going to stay. If they do not have a sustainable and stable, in every sense, roof over their head, all the training, employment and support that they are given can be lost because they are worrying about other things.

Long-term personalised mentoring and support is not a commodity business. I regret that we cannot scale it up, solve the problem, stack them high and sell them cheap. It will not work. This should be an individualised and one-to-one practice. The young person in front of you and looking for help needs to be the most important person in the world to you on that day.

One thing that I have learnt at Tomorrow’s People is that it is not the time to walk away when someone gets a job and makes a positive step in their journey. We need to stay with them in order to get the sustainability rates that we want. It is hard enough to get a job if you are well educated, come from a loving home and have everything, as has already been said. If we do not prepare these young people well for the world of work and do not spend as much time with the employer as we do with the young person, we will never effect the integration.

For employers to take on these young people is a big risk, on top of their worries about profits and things like that. We have to give them as much support as we can. Let me give one practical example. We were asked by a very large company to recruit, integrate and induct 12 of the most challenging cases in its community into its workforce. The young people were all assigned a job.

One young girl turned up for work on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and everyone was really happy with her. On Friday, she did not show up, so a member of staff drove to her house and knocked on the door. The girl came down in her PJs. She was asked, “Why aren’t you at work?”. She said, “I never went to school on a Friday and no one ever bothered to chase me”. The girl was told to get dressed and get to work. The second week, it happened again, but on the third week she turned up on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The whole thing could have fallen apart for the sake of two car journeys. It is not rocket science, it is not sophistication, it is very practical.

I come to the most difficult part of what I have to say and I hope that the Minister is sitting down and happy. All of this needs money and there is not a lot of that about, is there? I am not making any judgments about that, but I know that there are people, employers and people who care about our society, who are prepared to invest in this area of work through the medium of social impact bonds and social finance. I want the Minister, please, to spend some time seeing whether we can accelerate our social investment activity. Patience is not a virtue I have managed to cultivate and I think that I am going to give up trying, because we need to go faster and the one thing that is holding us up is the commissioning side, from Government. Please do not take that as a judgment: we just need to get better at it.

Young people’s history in this field is well documented and well versed; everyone knows what they have done wrong and I would like us to spend time giving them a destiny and forgetting their history.