OnTrak programme
Supporting Offenders into Training and Employment
The Manchester College is the lead partner in OnTrak, a European Social Fund (ESF) programme supported under the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) programme. A partnership of prisons and probation trusts across the West Midlands deliver the programme along with private companies and voluntary organisations. The aim is to support participants into training and employment to reduce reoffending.
OnTrak will support some 3,600 offenders, 1500 with custodial sentences and 2,100 on probation or with community sentences. Whilst participation is voluntary, OnTrak case managers, through good case management, establish a strong rapport, use community payback hours and employability compacts to maximize delivery. OnTrak works with those furthest from work including offenders with learning difficulties, disabilities or health needs, priority and prolific offenders. The programme also has a focus on the need of women in the criminal justice system.
Good case work is central to the work, this includes motivating participants to engage, co-ordination of activity and liaison with relevant agencies to enable access to the services needed. In custody, case managers, employed by SOVA, link with offender supervisors and operate within offender management arrangements locally.
With organisations such as Holiday Inn, OnTrak tackles both sides of the employment dilemma faced by job seekers with criminal records in the West Midlands. On one hand, the programme provides access to the services and training offenders need to get work and on the other it liaises with employers to build relationships and broker the skills offenders can offer.
In the community, case workers, employed by JHP Training work with offender managers, employment training and education staff and community payback staff to support participants into work. Our approach is consistent with the integrated offender management work that is ongoing in the region and is flexed to fit with the work of the three Probation Trusts in the region.
For more information email David Pruden, the Programme Manager at dpruden@themanchestercollege.ac.uk