Work in Hollesley Bay and Warren Hill At the start of this year we were approached by Warren Hill Prison to ask us if we could run one of our Life Skills courses for prisoners who were in 6 months of being released. After much consultation, we have agreed to pilot a Life Skills course in October and November. This will be led by Julia Rose and Peter Marrett. Obviously this will involve adapting the materials and teaching to reflect the very different circumstances of this group. Please pray for the team as they prepare
and deliver this course in a very different environment to usual.
In March, we were asked to run a debt clinic in Hollesley Bay, as part of National Debt Week. Laura, Julia and Chris went one afternoon in March and between them saw and spoke with 8 prisoners who were concerned about the debts that they had. For many of them, the issue was that they had had finance on items like cars and personal loans, when an unexpected prison sentence had meant that they were unable to maintain their payments. Although we are unable to offer our full debt service to people who are in prison, we were able to talk through where they stood on issues such as this. Where there were questions
that we didn’t know the answer to, we were able to go away and ask Darren, our area manager, and then email the prison governor who passed on the response to the relevant inmate. The feedback was that these prisoners found the clinic very helpful and reassuring, so Laura and Julia returned to run another clinic in July and will be running one a term in future.
Laura