An innovative new partnership between Pete Bell’s ‘Step Out Stay Out’ football-based rehabilitation programme and HMP Lowdham Grange looks set to benefit prison leavers and the deprived community of Clifton in Nottingham.
The Step Out Stay Out Resettlement Pathway, based at the Clifton Football Centre in the heart of Europe’s second-biggest housing estate, will offer people released from HMP Lowdham Grange (which is run by Serco on behalf of the Ministry of Justice) opportunities in many areas. These include specially-tailored courses to train them up as football coaches, as well as potential routes into training and employment.
The benefits of the partnership work in the opposite direction too: prison residents will share their powerful, cautionary stories via live Zoom calls to youngsters from the estate in schools and PRUs who may be at-risk of becoming involved in crime, gangs, violence, drugs or alcohol.
Pete will start the process with fortnightly visits to the prison to form relationships with people who are due for release. He tells them his own powerful story of incarceration, loss and redemption through football and talks with them individually about the impact of their offending.
After building up trust (a process helped by Pete’s relatability as an ex-prison resident himself) he hopes to then engage them in the opportunities on offer in Clifton post-release, which will help their successful re-integration into society and increase their chances of a positive future and desistance from crime.
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