Employment: Prisoners' Release

(asked on 28th February 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many work coaches who specialise in working with women leaving prison are currently employed by her Department.


Answered by
David Rutley Portrait
David Rutley
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
This question was answered on 9th March 2022

DWP continues to contribute to cross-government work to improve support for female offenders through the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) led Female Offender strategy and the Female Concordat. We provide a range of support to help ex-offenders re-establish themselves back in the community and into work. DWP’s offer is gender neutral, covering both male and female offenders, tailored to their specific individual needs. We are therefore unable to provide the number of work coaches who specialise in working with women prison leavers.

Around 200 Work Coaches are based in prisons across Great Britain, provide benefit advice before release, including booking an appointment at the local jobcentre on or soon after the day of release for those who intend to make a Universal Credit claim. There is also a dedicated National Prison Leaver telephone claim line for those who are unable to claim online.

As part of our commitment in the recently published Prisons White Paper, this year DWP and MoJ will work together to test different approaches to preparing Universal Credit claims and claimant commitments before release in 15 prisons, including female prisons, with a view to rolling out across the prison estate by 2024.

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