1/07/2013
I’m an ex-offender and I've done a 6 and a 12 year sentence
back to back. I came out in 2011 and have been working for User Voice for two
and a half years now. I didn't think I would be doing this sort of job or even
working in this sort of environment before I came out of jail, but I applied
myself and did a degree in counselling and two diplomas in gang mentoring.
I've gone from setting up community programmes in probation,
to setting up prison programmes and teaching them how to write proposals in the
prisons. I’m working in mental health now as well and doing peer mentoring for
mental health patients- it’s ridiculous to see how many projects I’m working on.
I think I've done so well, from what I used to be to what I am now, I've completely turned a page. As for the work I’m doing, it’s so interesting. I
work in Haringey Community Council and out of it came the toe by toe concept. I
used to do the toe by toe concept in jail where you could teach someone to read
and write. You use it as a tool to improve reading and writing skills, so
service users can grow in self-esteem get them up to a standard where they feel
comfortable to do literacy level one. A
lot of people are older- 30s-40s- they've not learnt to read and write all
their life. When they’re in jail they are forced to do things for themselves.
It was a service user’s idea saying we should do it in the
community and I went with it, going with what I know, and helped put it
together. I helped structure it and got the training done for the service users
in the community, and helped them facilitate it in the probation office. Its
grown now so that User Voice and probation have hired a programme manager to
put it together- you can do toe by toe inside, and when you come outside, you
can do peer mentoring. If anyone comes in and wants toe by toe training, I
would use my service users who are trained in toe by toe to do the training, so
it’s really teach one help one. When they've done that I put them onto someone
else in probation to help them write a CV.
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