Memorandum submitted by Demos
1. HEADLINE MESSAGE
1. Life skills training engages people in
work that is relevant and useful to them to build up their independent
living, personal and social skills. The confidence and self-belief
that this engenders stimulates aspiration and helps people to
make better choices for themselves. In prisons, it has led to
better behaviour, less bullying and fewer suicide threats.
2. INTRODUCTION
2. Demos, an independent think tank, has
been working on a project looking at using life skills to tackle
social exclusion[1]
since December last year. The work is funded by Crisis, a homelessness
charity and has been rooted in their "Skylight" project.
Skylight aims to engage its clients in "purposeful activity"
from art classes to bicycle maintenance, to build life skills
(defined below). Our research provides supporting evidence for
the effectiveness of this approach and has revealed four key principles
of successful delivery.
3. In addition to the general relevance
of this approach, as part of our research, we undertook a series
of case studies to assess whether our initial findings from Skylight
resonated in different contexts. One of these focussed on Drake
Hall prison in Staffordshire—a women's semi-open resettlement
prison whose main education programme is increasingly based on
a life skills agenda. The prison also outsources an "unlocking
life skills" project for young adult offenders to Nacro,
a crime reduction charity. This memorandum embeds the findings
on prison education from the Drake Hall case study in the outcomes
of this broader research.
3. DEFINING LIFE
SKILLS
4. Advocates of life skills training typically
mean one or both of two things when they talk about life skills.[2]
Firstly, they refer to practical skills which facilitate independent
living. Typically, these include keeping oneself fed and nourished,
as well as dealing with certain sorts of bureaucracy and budgeting.
Others refer to "softer" skills; skills which enable
people to interact with one another successfully and form good
relationships. One organisation, for example, distinguishes between
the two by describing practical life skills as "independent
living skills" and "soft" life skills as "personal
and social skills".[3]
5. The Demos report contends that soft skills
are the foundation on which other training must be based, whether
it is formal education, or learning to cook. Successfully filling
in a benefits form is only useful, for example, if the applicant
can control their temper when confronted with a challenge to their
claim. Equally, learning to cook for your child is only meaningful
if you can get them to come to the table. Our findings at Drake
Hall support and extend this: where young women have been successful
in the Nacro life skills project, they are more likely to have
the confidence and desire to undertake other projects in the education
centre or to apply for college courses on their release.
4. FOUR PRINCIPLES
OF SUCCESSFUL
DELIVERY
6. Delivering life skills training is not
the same as classroom learning. We often learn, or absorb soft
life skills in particular from our family and friends as we grow
up. Social skills, self-belief and trust, for example, cannot
be imposed—they must be experienced and often grow out of
other things that we do. Doing a drama course engages people with
their emotions and teaches them to express feeling as well as
straightforwardly delivering communication skills. It also enables
participants to experience the added value of group working and
builds trust between members. When talking about independent living
skills, the need for experiential learning is equally clear. Reading
a cookbook is not the same as making spaghetti and learning to
test when it is ready.
7. Four principles at the root of successful
delivery of life skills courses emerged clearly from our in-depth
research at Skylight:
— Voluntarism and ownership.
The meaning of these will be expanded on in
the context of the Drake Hall case study.
5. PARTICULAR
LESSONS FROM
DRAKE HALL
8. Four key factors influence successful
delivery of life skills work throughout the prison and with young
adult offenders. Many of these overlap with the "general"
lessons extracted in other work. The names of project members
have been changed.
Experiential Courses
9. The young women on Nacro's young adult
offender course have often had negative experiences at school.
The value of `non-classroom' working is as valuable for what it
is not as for its intrinsic effectiveness. The setting is consciously
casual with girls and project workers sitting in comfortable chairs
in groups of no more than 10 people.
10. "Communication" is typical
of the courses delivered. It involves participation in group discussion
and role play—you do not pass the course until it has been
noted that you have contributed. It is a simple and very effective
approach. "It gave me confidence" said Rachel, ".
. . now I talk more". She added, "I've seen it come
out in [the other girls]". This contribution to and participation
in other people's success is a rewarding experience in itself.
It also reflects back to the young women how much they have achieved,
reinforcing their own accomplishments and creating a group bond
which has led to improved behaviour in the young adult offender
house.
Voluntarism
11. It seems paradoxical to talk about voluntarism
in the context of a prison, but it is a vital component of the
life skills work undertaken at Drake Hall. Participation in the
Nacro project is voluntary; on arrival at the prison, women can
choose between a range of activities including gardening, formal
education and Nacro. This is important in two ways:
12. Firstly, it means simply that women
are choosing something in which they are interested, which is
vital for commitment and enthusiasm. It also provides a measure
of its success—many of the women that we spoke to picked
the Nacro project because of the good things that they had heard
about it. There are strong incentives to project workers then
to maintain the project's relevance. Similarly, within the project
there is extensive choice about which components the women undertake,
further tailoring the relevance of the work to the individual.
13. Secondly, the fact that the women are
trusted to take this decision for themselves, and are successful
when they do so is vital to their confidence—learning to
choose is as important as gaining the skills which the course
explicitly offers. Extending this idea, the feedback system in
both the Nacro project and the prison as a whole, makes listening
to the women, and responding to their suggestions for improvement
a priority. They come to see their voice as important. Last year
for example, Nacro delivered a successful first-aid course within
the programme, but re-focussed it on babies and children when
participants suggested this might be the most relevant area. The
group discussed it together, and compromised over what would best
serve them all—an important skill in itself.
Staff and Trust
14. Relationships with staff are central
to successful project delivery—the feedback described above,
for example, occurred in casual conversation with Nacro staff.
Rachel says that the Nacro staff are "not like officers who
judge you. We trust Nacro". This contrast is accentuated
by avoiding artificial barriers—Nacro staff wear casual
clothes, not uniforms. They sit around and chat with the girls,
often after they are officially meant to be there. The Head of
Education gets her hair cut in the on-site hairdressers which
is staffed by Drake Hall inmates. Everyone is on first name terms
and greets each other casually whilst walking around the site.
It may well be that the image of the officer as judge, and source
of discipline helps to facilitate the trust and amiability between
project workers and young offenders—the contrast between
the two makes the "good cop" seem even better.
15. These relationships really matter: project
members go to Nacro staff to talk through worries about their
past, present or future; they approach Nacro staff for help with
practical difficulties like sorting out compassionate leave and
doctors appointments; and they talk to them after they get out
for support, and to share successes and worries. A project worker
pointed out that letting girls come to them, and not vice versa,
is central to making this work—staff are a resource which
project members can choose to use if they are comfortable with
it.
Recognition
16. Recognition, both traditional (certificates)
and non-traditional, is a powerful part of the life skills framework.
17. Members of the Nacro project really
value the certificates they gain, regardless of whether they are
externally recognised or not. It is worth noting though that the
deadlines for assessment are flexible so the young women are not
set up for failure. For Rachel who was expelled from school at
14, these were the first qualifications she had ever had. The
impact of this should not be underestimated; "it's changed
what I want—it makes you feel better in yourself".
The prison recognises this, and has begun publishing a list of
achievements, and selected creative writing in the prison newsletter—anyone
who has a piece published gets their own copy to keep. These loose
structures may be as integral to the project as the flexibility
which allows courses to be tailored to the individual.
18. Perhaps even more significant is the
"non-traditional" recognition that women get where they
have developed particular skills or experience. Increased responsibility
is used as a marker of and reward for success which is highly
valued by inmates—more experienced members of the Nacro
project for example are trusted to help deliver courses like Communication.
Moving On
19. "Moving on" is an area that
has not yet been fully addressed, as both Nacro and the wider
prison acknowledge: demand exists but supply does not. Individual
Nacro project workers keep in casual contact with ex-project members
who seek out their support on release, but no systematic follow-up
exists. For Nacro, this is a question of insufficient resources,
and for the prison, an absence of proper links with the probation
service. Other projects we looked at dealt with outreach in variously
pro-active ways. Kaleidoscope[4]
in Surrey has set up a self-sustaining web-design business to
employ graduates of their web design course. Fairbridge,[5]
a national charity working with young people between 13-25, simply
keeps its doors open to ex-clients. Some drop in when they experience
a crisis, others come regularly to maintain the relationships
that have become important to them. The similar importance of
this familiarity and support at Drake Hall is suggested by the
fact that many of the women who want to "make a new start"
on their release, settle close by.
20. So how do we know that life skills training
works? Measuring impact is notoriously and inevitably difficult
but indicators do exist. Officers at Drake Hall have reported
better behaviour in the young adult offenders' house, girls come
and ask Nacro staff for more folders to put their overflowing
project work in, project members talk to and support each other
and many want to find out about and pursue college courses or
job opportunities. In the prison as a whole, bullying is down
and they rarely have any "F2052s" (inmates on suicide
watch)—this is significant when other women's prisons have
between 40 and 50 inmates on F2052s at any one time. Perhaps the
most important evaluation of the project comes from participants
themselves. As one member of the Nacro project said, "It's
good to have the sentence—really excellent, no-one knew
what they could do before they did Nacro".
5. POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS
21. Lessons on delivering life skills training
in prisons were drawn out in the Drake Hall case study and constitute
our practical recommendations: courses should be experiential
and success relies on voluntary participation, trust and familiarity
with staff and recognition of achievement.
22. Three further principles should inform
a successful life skills programme in prisons:
Measuring success though trusting professionals
and users' judgements
23. The outcomes of life skills training
are often incremental, slow to emerge and imperceptible to those
not working directly with clients. Traditional "hard"
measures of success will frequently be unsuitable for assessment.
Evaluation then will require a renewed trust in professionals'
judgements of people's progress within a particular programme.
Rather than expecting very frequent and highly structured details
of individual participants' progress, accountability should focus
on creating the capacity amongst professionals to make the day-to-day
judgements of progress, with more detailed feeding back taking
place much less frequently. Equally important will be the recognition
that a long-term involvement with some clients will not represent
a failure of the programme to work quickly, but instead a success
in engaging with highly vulnerable individuals.
The voluntary sector as the primary instrument
of delivery
24. This is important for two main reasons.
Firstly, there is a simple point to be made about the majority
of expertise in life skills training currently lying in voluntary
and community organisations. Secondly, and more importantly, people
experiencing social exclusion often have an instinctive mistrust
of authority. As the Nacro project at Drake Hall illustrated,
part of the young women's trust in project workers was derived
from the obvious distinction between them and prison officers;
the voluntary sector is best placed to develop the relationships
with people that are necessary for life skills development work
to be effective.
Users engaged in the co-production of services
25. Firstly, this refers to the vital involvement
of individual clients in developing their own "action plans"
or activity programmes. It also concerns the importance of formal
and informal feedback systems that collectively allow participants
to shape the courses between which they might choose. Finally,
ex-clients may become important players in delivering life skills
training as they offer both a specialised knowledge of the issues
and a degree of empathy, which is hard to find elsewhere.
June 2004
1 Lownsbrough, Hannah, with Thomas, Gillian and Gillinson,
Sarah; From Isolation to Integration: Using Life Skills to
Tackle Social Exclusion, Demos (forthcoming). Back
2
For example, organisations such as Crisis, Centrepoint, Fairbridge,
Prince's Trust and others. Back
3
Fairbridge, a national youth charity working with socially excluded
young people aged between 13 and 25 makes this distinction in
its operational strategy (unpublished). Back
4
www.kaleidoscopeproject.org.uk Back
5
www.fairbridge.org.uk Back
| 
