Written evidence from Crisis (SEO0044)

Introduction

1. Crisis, the national charity for single homeless people, is pleased to respond to this inquiry into support for ex-offenders.
2. Crisis is dedicated to ending homelessness by delivering life-changing services and campaigning for change. Our innovative education, employment, housing and well-being services address individual needs and help people transform their lives. This includes work with ex-offenders across all our services, including a dedicated employment team in London that works with prisoners both pre- and post-release and a café training programme for those leaving custody.

Summary

3. Crisis believes more support should be provided both prior to and post release to help offenders secure accommodation and take steps towards employment. Crisis’ services for ex-offenders appear to be filling a gap that is not being delivered by statutory agencies or commissioned support, whether that be from prisons, probation services, Jobcentre Plus or the Work Programme.
4. In this submission we outline our own service delivery model for offenders before responding to those questions from the inquiry were we have relevant expertise. We make the following recommendations to improve the support provided to ex-offenders:

a)      Prisoners should receive motivational and practical ‘through the gate’ support from an individual they can build trust with over time, in order to suitably prepare them for employment on release

b)      Jobcentre Plus Work Coaches should receive specialist training on the particular needs of ex-offenders and specialist advisors should be introduced to provide targeted support to ex-offenders

c)      Prison resettlement teams should collaborate with local charities and private rented sector access schemes who are well placed to support prison leavers into accommodation

d)      Government should continue to fund such schemes and should underwrite a national rent deposit guarantee for organisations supporting homeless people to use in place of a cash deposit

e)      Prisoners should be provided with pre-tenancy training while in prison to increase their likelihood of sustaining a tenancy in future as well as more attractive to prospective landlords

f)       Prisoners should be supported while still in prison to obtain the appropriate documents to prove their ‘right to rent’ on release

g)      The Government should place new statutory duties on English local authorities to prevent and relieve homelessness, as well as a corresponding duty on probation teams to co-operate with local authorities when carrying out the prevention duty and a strengthened advice and information duty to require collaboration between the two

h)     A one-off non-repayable advance payment of Universal Credit should be made available to prisoners on release. At the very least targeted support should be provided to begin the claims process for Universal Credit in prison, including support to open a bank account and information about Universal Credit Advances

i)        The Government should introduce a specific exemption to enable 18 to 21 year olds leaving custody to claim the housing element of Universal Credit

j)        The existing exemption to the Shared Accommodation Rate for ex-offenders should be widened

k)      Prison staff should improve communication with voluntary agencies, as well as with police and employers to complete timelier safety checks for employers

Offending and homelessness

5. Significant numbers of ex-offenders face homelessness. Spending time in prison increases the risk of homelessness and being homeless increases the risk of reoffending. Research commissioned by Crisis has found that 33 per cent of homeless people report having spent time in prison.[1] In 2015 30 per cent of clients using Crisis Skylight services declared that they had a criminal record at the point of first coming to Crisis.[2]
6. The accommodation available to ex-prisoners is often limited, with many left with nowhere to go when they leave custody. Clients working with Crisis’ dedicated services for ex-offenders, unless they are living in approved premises, are typically sofa surfing or rough sleeping.

Crisis Skylight

7. Crisis Skylight centres offer employment services and learning opportunities embedded within a holistic model that offers support across a whole range of issues. We support ex-offenders through this model and in 2015 our employment services supported 181 clients with a declared history of offending into work, giving our services a 23 per cent success rate.
8. The employment service is delivered through a coaching model, with each client allocated their own trained coach to provide tailored support to overcome the individual’s barriers to work. Coaches build trust and encourage clients to take personal responsibility for their journey towards work, as well as providing practical support to write a CV, complete job applications, search for jobs and prepare for interviews.
9. For clients with convictions, this includes having a frank discussion about the sort of jobs they are likely to be excluded from due to their offending background, such as cash-handling or customer facing roles, depending on the nature of the offence. Job coaches continue to provide support for the first twelve months of employment to ensure clients can sustain their job.
10. Clients can also access support from a housing coach to secure access to adequate and affordable housing. Progression coaches are available to focus on goal-setting, directing people towards courses, activities and specialist services, including support to improve access to mental health services and promote individual well-being.
11. Job coaches provide targeted support to ex-offenders around disclosure of their offence to potential employers. Ex-offenders typically disclose not enough or too much about their conviction and rarely receive support and information about disclosure while in prison. The support provided by Crisis focuses not only on what they legally need to disclose and what will appear on a DBS check but how and when to do so, including how to disclose if asked at interview. Clients are supported to write a disclosure letter, usually to be given to the employer at offer stage, which discloses the offence and at the same time contains detailed information about their skills and experience.
12. In addition to our general Skylight offer, Crisis Skylight London has a dedicated team of three job coaches working exclusively with offenders. The Unlock your Potential team works with prisoners still serving their sentence, and continues to provide support upon release. Coaches provide one-to-one coaching support and provide targeted support to help clients retrain if they cannot return to their previous profession. As well as providing support around disclosure through one-to-one coaching, the team also offers a disclosure workshop twice a year. This includes inviting former clients to come in and talk about their experiences of rebuilding their lives following a prison sentence. In the last two years the Unlock your Potential team worked with 464 clients, of whom 158 (34 per cent) found paid employment.
13. Our Unlock Your Potential coaches also work directly with employers, providing support once a client has entered work. While many employers can be nervous about employing ex-offenders, being able to talk through any issues with an individual’s job coach helps mitigate any perceived risks and encourages them to look beyond an individual’s criminal record. Coaches discuss the issue of disclosure with prospective employers, encouraging employers to avoid a blanket policy of sifting out candidates with convictions at application stage, but to instead discuss the length and nature of an offence at the point of making an offer, should an offence be disclosed.

Café from Crisis

14. Our London, Newcastle and Oxford Skylights each run a social enterprise café which offers training and work experience to homeless people and ex-offenders. The London café offers café training opportunities in partnership with Switchback, an organisation that supports young ex-offenders to bring about real, lasting change in their lives. Switchback trainees are 18-24 year olds and start work with a dedicated CBT trained Switchback mentor three months prior to release. The personalised and intensive programme is change-focused, encouraging trainees to come up with their own direction and bring about long-term change in their lives.
15. Switchback trainees undertake their first shift at Café from Crisis within a week of being released from prison and spend two days a week in the café for a maximum of 16 weeks. The café training programme has a strong focus on preparing trainees for the reality of holding down a job, developing soft skills such as timekeeping and attitude to work. For those who want to pursue a career in catering, there is also the option to take an accredited course in food hygiene. All trainees leave with a reference and a certificate.
16. In 2015 Switchback worked with twenty-eight Café from Crisis trainees, twenty of whom went on to gain paid employment as a result of their training. Switchback had no clients reoffend or be recalled in 2015.

How are prisoners helped to find employment; is support available both pre and post-release? Do the employment and education programs available in prisons prepare prisoners for formal employment?

17. Through our work with prisoners and ex-offenders, we have found that intervention at the right time is key to people rebuilding their lives and preventing reoffending. However we often find that at the point that prisoners come to Crisis, they have not received adequate support to meaningfully address their employability and other needs or to prepare them for the realities of finding work. Clients have typically either completed courses in prison that offer little in terms of increasing their chances of getting a job, or have been unable to complete qualifications they began working towards (especially if they have been moved between prisons during their sentence).
18. As outlined above, prisoners require pragmatic input on the sorts of employment they will be able to move into, depending on the nature of their conviction. This is often not provided, and in many cases the employment support and courses provided in prison actually increase unrealistic expectations as to the sort of work an individual can do and the likelihood of them obtaining work in their chosen field. Clients engaging with Crisis are typically highly motivated to work but often haven’t been encouraged to think through the practical steps they will need to take to move into work. This can be highly demotivating for individuals at the point of release when they become aware of the significant challenges they face in entering employment. For those who have served long sentences, this can include building up social skills that they may have lost over the course of their sentence
19. Release from prison is a period of huge transition for ex-offenders. The temptation to fall back into crime can be significant, particularly given that many ex-offenders lack the self-confidence to meaningfully change their lives. This is particularly acute for those who have been accustomed to high earnings funded through crime, for whom the prospect of surviving on Jobseeker’s Allowance or a minimum wage job requires significant adjustment.
20. For these reasons it’s vital that prisoners receive intensive ‘through the gate’ support from an individual they can build trust with over time, in order to suitably prepare them for employment on release. This support should be highly motivational, encouraging individuals to want to bring about long-term change in their lives. It should also provide practical support and information around subjects such as disclosure. This is central to both the Crisis and Switchback models but is rarely seen within the statutory and commissioned support available. This will make better use of prisoners’ time and prevent support workers from having to wait until release to begin what can be a slow process.
21. Many prisoners would benefit from a peer support model to give them the confidence that it is possible to rebuild their lives. This could be particularly beneficial for prisoners who are housed out of area, for whom it can be particularly difficult to engage with support networks prior to release in the area they are to be released back to.
22. Crisis is also concerned about the quality of employment support provided to prisoners upon release. Those leaving custody are automatically referred to the Work Programme but, as outlined in previous responses to the Committee, Crisis has serious concerns about the Work Programme’s performance in meeting the needs of single homeless people.[3]

Case study: lack of tailored support for a prison leaver on the Work Programme[4]

Kieran had recently been released from prison and was receiving support from his probation officer at the same time as being on the Work Programme. The advisor would often forget about Kieran’s other commitments and make appointments that would clash with the probation service. Kieran said that he was ‘threatened with sanctioning’ if he did not attend them despite frequently telling the advisor about his probation service appointments.

23. Our Skylight services report a worrying lack of expertise and understanding amongst Jobcentre Plus staff and Work Programme providers about the needs of homeless ex-offenders. In some instances this includes lacking basic information about the restrictions some convictions place on the work that ex-offenders can do.

Case study: lack of Jobcentre Plus expertise on the implications of criminal records

Michael[5] was given a life sentence in 2008 with an eight year IPP tariff for robbery. He was released from custody in 2015 and claimed Jobseeker’s Allowance from a Jobcentre Plus in North London, where he informed his job adviser of his offence. Michael was advised by his job advisor to attend an Open Day at Stansted Airport showcasing various jobs within the airport. He explained to his adviser that the nature of his offence would prevent him from passing security clearance to work in an airport. His job advisor mandated him to attend the Open Day, under threat of being sanctioned. Michael attended the Open Day where he spoke to various prospective employers who confirmed he would need to pass security clearance as part of the application process. Michael continues to look for work in the construction industry and is working with an Unlock Your Potential job coach at Crisis Skylight London.

24. Crisis believes that, as the Work Programme comes to an end in 2017 and more ex-offenders will be engaging with Jobcentre Plus, it’s vital that Jobcentre Plus Work Coaches receive specialist training in the particular needs of ex-offenders. Crisis would also support the introduction of specialist advisors to provide targeted support to ex-offenders.

What support do offenders receive to help them find suitable accommodation on leaving prison?

25. Crisis is concerned about the lack of financial or practical support to find accommodation for those leaving prison, as well as the lack of support to find move-on accommodation for those initially housed in Approved Premises. Our clients are typically sofa-surfing or rough sleeping on release. Resettlement teams rarely check whether the address a prisoner is being released to is suitable, meaning sofa surfing arrangements often involve staying with friends or family members from the individual’s criminal past, with significant implications for reoffending.
26. Crisis Skylight Edinburgh reports that prison leavers are typically advised to present to the council as homeless, which will typically lead to them being housed in temporary accommodation (often B&B), rather than receiving any support to access sustainable accommodation. While the stronger homelessness duties in Scotland prevent many prison leavers from street homelessness, being placed in temporary accommodation can put people at significant risk of reoffending if they are housed with other ex-offenders.

Case studies: lack of support to find accommodation on release from prison[6]

“I told them in prison I had no housing [interviewer: can you tell me what help you got?] None whatsoever, absolutely none… apart from ‘go to the town hall.’” (Chris)

“I finished me probation and they said ‘you can go now’. I thought ‘sound, where do I go? [interviewer: where did you go?] I were in a Ford Sierra…it were abandoned at side of road so I crashed in there for a couple of nights.” (Simon)

27. We have however identified some examples of good practice. Probation services in Oxford– both Thames Valley Community Rehabilitation Company and the National Probation Service– have a good working relationship with Crisis Skylight Oxford and are proactive in working with us to ensure clients can be supported into housing via our housing coach service. This includes sharing risk assessments and other relevant information with Crisis staff and quickly completing checks on private rental properties, including making site visits, to confirm suitability for ex-offenders.
28. We have also identified some good practice in Plymouth, where Crisis has a job coach based at Shekinah, a charity that provides opportunities for people in recovery from homelessness, drug and alcohol issues, offending behaviours or mental ill health. For the past four years Shekinah has hosted a probation officer who has worked closely with the Housing Information Signposting Service, a local voluntary service that supports those who are homeless or at risk of homelessness to access and sustain tenancies. By being co-located with Shekinah, the probation officer has also been able to make referrals to the wider services on offer at Shekinah, including its well-established employment and training programme for single homeless people. Regrettably the partnership between Shekinah and probation came to an end in early April due to new contracting arrangements with Dorset, Devon and Cornwall Community Rehabilitation Company.
29. Crisis wishes to see better collaboration between prison resettlement teams and probation services with local charities and private rented sector access schemes who are well placed to support prison leavers into accommodation. Crisis has considerable experience in supporting prison leavers into private rented sector accommodation. Between 2010 and 2014 Crisis received funding from the Department for Communities and Local Government to support access schemes to help single homeless people find and sustain good quality accommodation in the private rented sector. Such access schemes not only provide help with deposits to access accommodation but also wrap-around support to find accommodation and sustain a tenancy.
30. We provided funding and support to 50 projects, six of which focused exclusively on ex-offenders. Of these, half were in the top quartile for meeting their performance targets around tenancy creation and sustainment, demonstrating that with the right kind of support landlords can be found for this client group.[7] Crisis used the learning from working with these schemes to develop a toolkit to help prison workers support people leaving prison in finding a home in the private rented sector.[8]
31. However, for this model to be successful and to avoid undue burden being placed on voluntary agencies, there must be sufficient funding in place and an appropriate referrals mechanism. This could include Community Rehabilitation Companies including private rented sector access schemes in their supply chains. Some of our Skylight services report that local probation services offer no financial support to help with resettlement, such as rent in advance, bonds or deposits, but make frequent referrals to our service. Many of these referrals are unsuitable because the individuals are not seeking the wrap-around support offered by Crisis Skylight, but simply financial support to access accommodation. In other cases relevant risk information has not been shared with us.
32. The Government should continue to make dedicated funding available for private rented sector access schemes that work with ex-offenders and should underwrite a national rent deposit guarantee for organisations supporting homeless people to use in place of a cash deposit. Rent deposit guarantee schemes operated by local authorities should avoid local connection criteria that prohibit prison leavers who have been held out of area from accessing support on release.
33. Crisis also believes that more should be done to prepare prisoners while still in custody for the realities of the housing market. Our services report that clients typically leave prison with unrealistic expectations that they will be eligible for a social tenancy on release, including in areas of high demand such as London. These expectations are not being managed while in prison, meaning that prisoners have little understanding of how to seek support, find accommodation or sustain a tenancy. Crisis has developed our own accredited course to prepare tenants for independent living, Renting Ready, which we have delivered in prisons and Approved Premises and in collaboration with London Community Rehabilitation Company. Prisoners should be provided with pre-tenancy training while serving their sentence to increase their likelihood of sustaining a tenancy in future as well as more attractive to prospective landlords.
34. The Immigration Act 2014 requires private landlords in England to check new tenants have the right to be in the UK before renting out their property. Prisoners should be supported while still in prison to obtain the appropriate documents to prove their ‘right to rent’ on release. While a letter from the prison and/ or from the National Offender Management Service are included in the list of acceptable documents to prove someone’s ‘right to rent’, some prisoners may prefer not to disclose their criminal record to a prospective landlord, provided the landlord does not ask them to disclose, including through the terms of the tenancy agreement.
35. More fundamentally, Crisis wishes to see a much stronger emphasis on preventing ex-offenders from becoming homeless in the first place. Single homeless people, including those leaving prison, are generally not considered to be in ‘priority need’ under the homelessness legislation in England, meaning that their council has no legal duty to find them housing. Based on the findings of an expert independent panel, Crisis recommends a change in the law to introduce a universal prevention duty on local authorities in England, similar to the law introduced in Wales in 2015.[9] This would ensure that anyone facing homelessness would be entitled to meaningful help, regardless of their priority need status. Key to implementing this new duty will be the ability of local authorities to work with a range of partners. Probation teams should therefore have a duty to co-operate with local authorities when they carry out this new prevention duty.
36. Crisis is also calling for a stronger relief duty requiring local authorities to take reasonable steps to help secure accommodation for all homeless households, as well as a strengthened advice and information duty which would closely mirror Section 60 of the Housing (Wales) Act (2014). This latter duty would require local authorities to work with other public authorities and voluntary organisations to ensure that the service is designed to meet the needs of groups at particular risk of homelessness, including those leaving prison. [10]

What benefit payments are available on discharge from prison and how long does it take to access those benefits?

37. Skylight services report that the support provided to prisoners to start the application process for benefits is inconsistent and often dependent on the quality of support provided by individual prison officers. Prisoners rarely leave prison having submitted a benefit application and typically wait approximately four weeks for their first payment of Jobseeker’s Allowance. This has significant implications for reoffending, given that prisoners typically leave prison with very little money, if any.
38. Crisis has serious concerns that the estimated five week wait[11] for a first payment of Universal Credit will put prison leavers at even greater risk of sustained homelessness and reoffending, given that any delay in initiating the application will prolong this delay even further. Many of the prison leavers we work with do not have a bank account, which is likely to cause even further delay if this is not taken care of prior to release. Given that closed prisons do not allow access to the internet, it is unclear how prisoners will be able to initiate an online application.
39. Crisis wishes to see a one-off non-repayable advance payment of Universal Credit made available to prisoners on release, to improve prison leavers’ chances of resettling in the community and mitigate the risk of reoffending. At the very least it is vital that targeted support is provided to begin the claims process for Universal Credit in prison, including support to open a bank account and information about Universal Credit Advances.
40. Crisis also has concerns about the possible implications for young people leaving custody of the Government’s plans to restrict most unemployed 18 to 21 year olds from claiming the housing element of Universal Credit. Crisis welcomes the Government’s commitment to protect the most vulnerable and believes a specific exemption is necessary for young adults leaving custody, to provide stability and support to help them adjust at this critical time when the risk of reoffending is greatest.
41. Crisis also wishes to see a wider exemption to the Shared Accommodation Rate for ex-offenders. The current exemption for high risk ex-offenders subject to Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) only applies to those aged 25 to 34 and to those subject to the highest MAPPA levels (levels 2 and 3). This forces high risk sexual and violent offenders aged under 25 to live in shared accommodation, as well as those subject to level 1 MAPPA, who pose a low to medium risk of serious harm to others. This also has risks for reoffending; independent research suggests that ex-offenders who have to share, especially those in ‘stranger shares’ where criminal activity is taking place, are at risk of reoffending if placed in this kind of unstable environment.[12] Those whose risk level is reduced to level 1 are required to move from self-contained to shared accommodation if they move address, which could undermine any progress made in that time.

What are the impacts of factors such as homelessness and unemployment on the propensity to re-offend?

42. The impact of homelessness on reoffending is outlined throughout this submission. Without stable accommodation, it can be very tempting for prison leavers to return to their old way of life. This is particularly the case for those forced into sofa surfing with former criminal partners. The experience of being homeless on release can prompt some to resort to survival crime in order to provide a roof over their head. Research commissioned by Crisis found that 28 per cent of homeless people report having committed a crime in the hope of spending a night in custody rather than sleeping on the streets.[13]
43. Our experience of working with ex-offenders shows however that targeted interventions at the right time to address housing and employability needs can significantly reduce the risk of reoffending. Earlier studies indicate that stable accommodation can cut reoffending rates by 20 per cent.[14] Not only can this reduce crime rates but this also delivers significant savings to the public purse. The upfront costs of the intensive wrap-around support necessary to support prison leavers into housing and work are significantly lower than the estimated annual cost of over £33,000 of housing an individual in prison.[15]

How does benefit and employment support integrate with other services for ex-offenders?

44. Crisis believes better communication is needed between prison and probation staff and voluntary agencies that provide specialist employment support to ex-offenders, in order to improve the quality of referrals. This should include better sharing of information about benefits and the address or area that prisoners are being released to, as well as risk information. In practice our services often struggle to obtain basic information from prisons, resulting in us receiving urgent phone calls from the prisoners themselves once they are released. While we receive some referrals from prison resettlement teams to our Unlock Your Potential service in London, the majority of these clients are self-referrals who write to us from prison or visit our Skylight centre under their own initiative when released on temporary licence.
45. Offender management teams should also collaborate better with police, voluntary agencies and employers to complete timelier safety checks for employers. Our services report that offender management teams within prisons are primarily focused on moving people on rather than considering their long term outcomes once they leave prison. This can make them slow to complete safety checks for employers, even when there is an employer willing to hire an offender while released on temporary licence, meaning that vital work experience and employment opportunities are lost.

April 2016