The Wise Group & The Purpose Coalition

Transcript

Ruth Cadbury MP

I found today really powerful the Purpose Coalition and the Wise Group who between them do so much work to support offenders, people being released from prison into a normal life and also to hear from people with lived experience and the jobs they now do mentoring and supporting people who had similar or maybe different journeys to them but into that difficult world sorting out accommodation, jobs, money, and emotional resilience. I found that really, really powerful.

Victoria Carson

It's been such a rich discussion today, really clear from the stories from our mentors and the people that we support that lives are really complex and that ensuring that we support people in the way that they need and not through one lens is how we need to build our future for people.

Lord Walney

It's been great to be with Shadow Prisons Minister Ruth Cadbury here in Durham today, talking with a range of people from businesses, from the Wise Group, from HMP Durham Prison about the challenge of making sure the prison leavers have got the skills and the capacity that they need and to be able to get into fulfilling work which can be transformative for their lives to stop the revolving door of people leaving and then and go back into custody, but also for the businesses to be able to allow them to have access to motivated and skilled people that they need to be able to provide the jobs and the growth and the investment that our economy desperately needs to get back on its feet and to be able to ensure that areas like here in Durham and across the country can meet the challenge of increasing our growth rate vital to those individual firms that we're really proud to have.