Our Impact Report 2011

It’s here! It’s done!  After quite a few months of long hours at Penrose towers and lots of hard work and contribution from so many staff, we are delighted to launch our very first Impact Report.

A big thank you to everyone who helped and we hope you like it.

Here is a note from our CEO, Gill Arukpe to announce its launch and the digital ebook to download. For anyone keen to receive a physical copy, contact Sara Beirne at sara.beirne@penrose.org.uk or give us a shout on Twitter @penroseha

Thanks !

To download the report ebook, click here: Penrose Impact Report 2011 -ebook

From our CEO:

We are delighted to announce the release of our 2011 – 2012 Impact Report.

In these times of economic austerity, Penrose is proud to be able to continue to offer you growth, quality and innovative new services as we work towards a brighter future.

In both Government and public debate there has been increased discussion and concern over the UK’s rising prison population numbers, the effectiveness of prisons and in-patient care and their unsustainable, increasing costs. This has highlighted an acute need for effectual and viable alternatives to incarceration in penal and secure mental health units. Penrose firmly believes in providing services that are the most effective in reducing the propensity to re-offend or suffer mental health and substance misuse relapse, whilst promoting rehabilitation and creating safer communities.

Economic crisis should not prevent those who have been excluded from society due to offending, substance misuse or mental illness from having the opportunity to change their lives. Our concentration in 2011 and 2012 is on providing effective services which deliver results and immediate, practical support that meets the needs of Service Users, helping them to overcome barriers to reintegration, successfully manage their mental illness whilst living in the community and lead life-long offence-free lives. Penrose’s specifically targeted schemes designed from experience ensure stability and economic independence, whilst making positive contributions to local communities and wider society.

Looking back at 2010, I am proud of Penrose’s achievements. In both financial, service delivery and development impact terms our floating support and residential services continued to provide robust and innovative support for socially excluded people with complex needs. 

This 2010 – 2011 annual impact report is also available online; we wanted to make sure that our first report was more accessible to more stakeholders, and you could navigate through the information more easily.

On behalf of the Executive Team and the Board of Penrose, I would like to thank our funders, staff and Service Users. They have invested all their dedication, trust, flexibility and talent against significant odds to make 2010 as successful as it has been and have helped to ensure a positive future for Penrose.

Kind regards

Gill Arukpe

CEO

Penrose

Penrose announces new project with Crisis

MARCH 17 2011

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CRISIS FUNDS NEW PROJECT TO HELP HOMELESS ACROSS LONDON

Penrose has been awarded £50,000 to help homeless people across London find a new place to live.

Penrose’s Private Accommodation Sourcing Scheme (PASS) has been awarded a £50,000 grant from Crisis to provide Private Rental Sector housing access across London for those that are ready for reintegration and independent living. Those to benefit from the scheme will have been Penrose clients for a minimum of 6 months and will be classed as “hard to place” due to previous anti-social behaviour and chaotic lifestyles. Penrose clients are largely those of BME background (78%) and ex-offenders from Penrose supported living schemes and referrals from local MAPPA services.

As part of PASS scheme, clients will attend Penrose’s tenancy sustainment course before taking up their new tenancy and clients and landlords will receive up to 6 months tenancy support to ensure any issues are resolved. This includes relapse prevention and debt management to prevent tenancy abandonment. Penrose will also work with partners Vision Housing who will “fast-track” move –ons for clients with low/no support needs who would benefit from immediate access to accommodation.

This local grant is part of England-wide Crisis funding awards of £2 million for 49 new projects that will help single homeless people find new homes and lasting independence . [1]

Each individual project [2] will receive a grant of up to £50,000 each for the coming year and they will target individuals who often struggle to find accommodation, including ex-offenders, young people under 25 and people living in temporary homeless hostels.

The Department of Communities and Local Government is funding the Crisis programme.  The homelessness charity has more than a decade of experience in helping homeless people find new homes in the private rented sector.

Crisis Chief Executive Leslie Morphy said:

“Single homeless people rarely meet the criteria to acquire council accommodation and finding a flat in the private rented sector can be a complex and expensive option. They need advice and help, but in many areas of the country, these specialist services are simply not there.

“Crisis asked local voluntary organisations to bid for these new funds so that we can kick-start the establishment of new private rented sector access schemes. These schemes will help people overcome financial barriers, match them to good landlords and help more individuals avoid the perils of homelessness.”

Housing Minister Grant Shapps said:
“I have made clear that while it is vital that we tackle the record Budget deficit we inherited, we must also ensure that the most vulnerable people in society are protected.

“That’s why we have maintained the level of Homelessness Grant in the Spending Review, and for the first time we’ve brought Ministers from across eight different Government departments together as a working group to ensure that the complex needs of the homeless are being met.

“So I am delighted that we have also been able to back these local projects supported by Crisis to the tune of £2.25 million. This will give single homeless people the chance they often don’t get of a helping hand towards a stable home and long term independence.”

Ends

For further information or to request an interview with the Penrose spokesperson please contact Sara Beirne at Penrose Head Office on  020 7700 0100 (ext 405)/ sara.beirne@penrose.org.uk or Lilly Crick on 020 7700 0100 (ext 293) / lilly.crick@penrose.org.uk

For further information or to request an interview with Crisis spokespeople, please contact Gillian Enlund at Crisis on 020 7426 3832 or gillian.enlund@crisis.org.uk

Notes to Editors

About Penrose:

Penrose has been providing help and support for ex-offenders and people with mental illness since 1968. We work to create safer and healthier communities, end the cycle of offending and constant return to in-patient psychiatric care. We provide high calibre specialist support, practical interventions, education and employment training for offenders and those with mental illness and personality disorders, leading the way to recovery and reintegration.

Focusing on prevention, relapse and reintegration, we support people with chaotic and complex needs: hard to engage people often with alcohol and substance misuse and dual diagnoses and those who present a high risk to the public or themselves.

Penrose is an exempt charity registered in England and Wales, Company number IP26973R.

www.penrose.org.uk

About Crisis:

Crisis is the national charity for single homeless people. We are leading the way to achieve greater access to private rented accommodation for single homeless people. With the support of the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) we run a national advisory service providing consultancy advice and support to local authorities and homelessness agencies across the country.

[1] The Crisis PRS Access Development Programme is an extension and development of this work using new funding from DCLG. It involves a programme of investment in new community based services to help single homeless people find and sustain good quality accommodation in the private rented sector (PRS).  For full information on the programme, how homeless people can be successfully housed in the private rented sector and details of existing access schemes across the country please see the best practice website Crisis manages: www.privaterentedsector.org.uk

In addition to the DCLG, this project is supported by the Ministry of Justice, Homeless Link and the National Landlords Association.

As well as the start-up funding Crisis will also be providing support to the schemes and they will be assessed on the extent to which they help the homeless people they place to sustain their tenancies.

[2] The full list of organisations who have successfully bid for PRS access scheme funds are:

Action Housing and Support Ltd, Barnsley

Adullam Homes. West Bromwich

Aquila Way, Gateshead

Bridgwater YMCA ,Sedgemoor

Brighton Housing Trust, Eastbourne

Brighton Housing Trust, Hastings

Broadway, Greater London

CAB WHABAC, Worcester

Causeway Irish Housing Association, Haringey

Coventry CAB, Coventry

Croydon Association for Young Single Homeless, Croydon

Deptford Reach, Lewisham

Derventio, Derby

Developing Initiatives for Support in the Community (DISC), Fylde

Doncaster YMCA, Doncaster

Elmbridge Rentstart, Elmbridge

Foundation NW, Blackburn

Horton Housing Association, Calderdale

Julian House, Bath & North East Somerset

Kettering Accommodation Concern,  Northampton

Lancaster and District Homeless Action Service

Lifeways, West Kent Housing Association

Nacro, Blackpool

Nacro,  Lincoln

Nacro, London

No Limits Southampton

NOMAD, Sheffield

PATH SW, Torbay

Penrose, London

Quaker Social Action, Hackney  & Tower Hamlets

Reigate and Redhill SE

Shap incorporating CHAS, Kirklees

Shelter (Sunderland)

SIFA Fireside  Birmingham

St Basil’s, Wyre Forest

St Mary’s Church, Warwick

St Mungo’s, Islington

St Petrock’s, Exeter

Stonham, Leicester

Thames Reach, Greenwich

Thames Reach, Lewisham

The Bond Board, Rochdale

The Hinge Centre, East Riding of Yorkshire ?

The Purfleet Trust, King’s Lynn & West Norfolk

The Whitechapel Centre, Liverpool

Threshold  Enfield & Barnet

Threshold, Wandsworth

Tyneside Cyrenians, Newcastle

Westcountry Housing Association, North Devon DC

Taking on a challenge

Part of the work we do in Penrose is to ensure that our Service Users get opportunities to constantly challenge themselves in positive ways and for them to try new things to build up their confidence and self-esteem.

Many of the people we support in Penrose had little opportunity to gain these skills in their childhood.  Many have spent the majority of their lives in hospital, young offender services and prison.  Lack of positive thinking and drive has led many of them into crime.

In Penrose the way we work with individuals has enabled us to have a recidivism rate of just 7% which is well below the national average!

One such way is to challenge 8 people in Penrose to do the Three Peak Challenge!

The Three Peaks Challenge is an attempt to climb the three highest peaks in the UK in ‘one go’ within 24 hours.

These peaks are Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon.

The brave eight who have never tried such a feat before are currently carrying our preparation to improve their fitness level. They are walking every day and started on the first day to walk from half way down Holloway Rd to London Bridge which took just over an hour.  Each one of them is also doing a range of fundraising activities in order to pay for the cost of completing this physical and emotional challenge.

All the money raised above the cost for competing will be going to Penrose. We intend to use the money the 8 manage to fundraise to develop volunteer opportunities in the community so that our service users can pay back something to the communities they live in and also pre employment programmes to increase their chance of becoming economically independent.

If you would care to sponsor one of the Penrose 8 please feel free to do so by contacting our fundraising team at fundraising@penrose.org.uk

Gill

Gill Arukpe, Chief Executive of Penrose

Penrose goes green for Chelsea Flower Show 2010

Service users join “Places of Change” to create biggest ever Show Garden

Penrose is delighted to be joining a number of homeless charities in creating the biggest ever Show Garden at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show in London.

Members of our gardening project have been tirelessly working on the Places of Change initiative, having been involved at various stages of the garden’s development; from planting, gardening, design, construction and carpentry during the site development.

Joining forces with The Eden Project who have designed the Places for Change garden, service users from the Fairmount and Effra Road projects have worked together to pot over 300 plants that will form part of a beautifully stunning display this weekend.

One our service users Clive, who has found the project very fulfilling, commented last month: “It’s going very well and looking forward to the other plants arriving at our project and then taking all the plants to be a part of the Chelsea Flower show. I have done some planting in pots with the earth and what not. I have done some watering then and now I am watching over the plants making sure they are okay and watering them when needed.”

Our gardening project has been a great success aiming to promote education, training and employment opportunities and provide support for tenants to carry out meaningful weekly-programmed activities. It also provides tenants with opportunities to apply for work within Penrose’s in-house employment programme where they are given the opportunity of real employment under the government’s supported permitted work scheme.

Verena Hewat, our Community Engagement Manager explains, “Gardening is good at building confidence and social skills, and the therapeutic value is useful for individuals who have mental health problems. The projects are of particular value for our tenants as many of them may not have done any training for some time and can therefore find large groups intimidating. A scheme such as this can be a great stepping stone, allowing them to go on to external colleges or training agencies in the community. Several of our tenants who have been involved in the scheme in the past have progressed on to working for other gardening projects in London.”

It is the first time service users involved in the Penrose gardening projects have been invited to participate in the Chelsea Flower Show, which is the most famous flower show in the world. The overall theme of the garden is craft and enterprise, and the importance of teamwork, which will be reflected in a number of specially designated zones such as crops and food; floristry and leisure; medicine and health; industry and manufacture; and conservation and the environment; all of which act as a metaphor for new skills and the journey embarked on by the individual to get there.

At 2.5 times the size of the Key and the largest Show Garden ever at Chelsea, the Places of Change garden will take this one step further, by offering even more opportunities for some of society’s most disadvantaged people.

We’ve been lucky to work alongside some great organisations to make it all happen, such as Homeless Link, the national umbrella organisation for frontline homelessness charities that is coordinating the involvement of homeless people and projects in the Places of Change Garden. Their Chief Executive, Jenny Edwards really hit it home saying: “We are delighted to be involved in this fantastic project again. We have just released research that shows a 33% increase since 2008 in the availability of specialist support services for vulnerable people, such as gardening, that help them to make positive changes in their lives. The Places of Change Garden is an example of such a project in action – it is about working in partnership to enable homeless people to show their talents.”

The 2010 Chelsea Flower Show takes place this weekend (25-29 May) at the Royal Hospital, London.

To see pictures and updates of the team’s work, check out our Flickr and Twitter pages!

For more information on the Chelsea Flower Show and how to get there, visit http://www.rhs.org.uk/

Whoever wins the election, we must stop criminalising people with mental illness…

As many other professionals working with people who suffer from Mental Health illness are asking I too add my voice and am asking Politicians to agree no matter who gets in after the next election we as a country stop criminalising people with mental illness for low tariff offences that presently carry short prison sentences!

It makes no sense to use tax payers money or achieve social justice to place people with mental illness in Prison just because there is little alternative. We at Penrose can provide diversion programmes that will ensure people are offered support whilst at the same time protect the public and are very effective at making sure people do not re offend because of their mental health.

More than one in ten prisoners has a severe mental illness and most do not receive the help and treatment that they need. So the chances of them re offending once released are high unless they are one of the few lucky ones who are directed to a suitable support service on release.

Having listened to service users in Penrose who tell me their experience of the criminal justice system it would not be out of this world for money currently being used to put the wrong people in prison to be diverted to stop someone causing an offence in the first place. For example it is not impossible for someone with a mental illness to be diverted away from being arrested in the first place if Officers received more support on the beat from trained mental health workers. If unfortunately someone is arrested could not a support service be called out to offer independent assistance before the person deteriorates in the arrest referral suite so that the case can be diverted away from the courts? If the individual still ends up in court could not a full mental health assessment be carried out prior to sentencing to see whether or not someone who might only receive a sentence of a month or so could benefit more from attending a diversion programme in the community?

Surely it makes more sense to stop people from becoming an offender in the first place and stop wasting tax payer’s money locking up people who are ill rather than getting them the treatment they need?

Gill

Gill Arukpe, Chief Executive of Penrose

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