Mission:

Our work is about influencing and changing behaviour and reducing harm; we do this through engaging with those who are identified as 'in need' and responding with 1-1 needs led and professional input. We place a high emphasis on building rapport and positive working relationships and possess an enviable record of success in terms of engagement, retention in service and most importantly impact. Our methods are 'person centred and solution and outcome focused' and we house them within a strengths based approach towards those we engage with. This means we focus on the future and 'the possible' whilst influencing the individual to take responsibility and move forward in their life.

Mentoring for us is a specialist, professional and skilled task and we're committed towards development within the field. Our delivery and methods have been independently and positively evaluated by Coventry University's Centre for Research in Psychology, Behaviour and Achievement (July 2014, executive summary February 2015) and copies of the document are available on request. We are a working partner of the University as of late 2015, specifically the Centre for Research in Psychology, Behaviour and Achievement and licensed and trained Outcome Star assessment practitioners. Also, all staff are professionally trained in the use and application of personal solution focused methods.

Our work usually involves direct engagement with men, sometimes women, who commit serious crimes, or work with family members who are affected by these circumstances. Within this we engage with long term unemployed, and those out of education, with a particular focus on people coming from complex and challenging backgrounds. Currently, assisting people back into work, vocational training and education makes up approximately fifty per cent of our work, as part of this delivery we regularly provide advice and guidance on a range of social welfare issues; helping people to find homes, apply for benefits and also seek out legal advice around a range of complex matters including safe contact with children and debt management.

We're passionate about focusing on the importance of strong and positive role models and direct a lot of our energies towards supporting people, young and old, to make better informed decisions about their behaviour and in turn understanding how their actions and thinking affects others. This combination approach assists our service users in moving their lives forward and in time, we hope, becoming 'agency free'.

Who delivers the services?: We are a team of experienced professionals and practitioners who have been involved in delivering quality services to achieve positive outcomes with challenging groups for decades; please see the 'the works here' page for more information. Our particular specialisms lie around those who are involved in 'high risk' and violent lifestyles.

People who most benefit from our input will be:

• Those deemed to be presenting high risk behaviours or are at high risk
• Those deemed to be difficult to engage
• Those deemed to be in need of targeted guidance and support due to negative and damaging lifestyle choices

Our mission is to deliver high quality interventions and outcomes through adhering to several core principles:

• Commitment towards building professional working relationships
• Always working in partnership
• Utilising up to date learning and delivery practices with a focus on 'person centred' approaches
• Consistency and Persistence

Being HMPPS shared services cleared, with associated identification, means we can enter custodial premises nationally and engage with people both in custody, and 'through the gate' into the community; This adds significant value to our work with those referred due to offending backgrounds. Where necessary, we work closely with prison offender management units to maximise opportunities for the impact of our work.

Theory and supporting research and learning: We apply a range of training and thinking in support of our work and approaches to engagement and service delivery. These include principles of rapport building and relationship management, conflict resolution and behavioural influencing and in more targeted and specialist work like our engagement with domestic violence perpetrators, we align our approaches closely to those written about and researched by Professor Dave Gadd (and team) from Manchester University in the 'Boys to Men' study 2013, and Dr. Kate Walker from Coventry University 'Desistance from Intimate Partner Violence' 2013.

Please look at the 'about us' page to find out more

If you are struggling to engage with an individual, a family or a group.. we can help