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2021-03-31-accounts

Prison Advice and Care Trust (Pact)

Trustees’ report and accounts

for the year ended 31 March 2021

A registered charity and company limited by guarantee

Charity registration number 219278 Company registration number 356443

www.prisonadvice.org.uk

Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report and accounts for the year ended 31 March 2021

Contents

Page

1 Reference and administrative details 2-55 Trustees’ report 56-58 Auditor’s report 59 Consolidated statement of financial activities 60 Consolidated and charity balance sheets 61 Consolidated and charity statement of cashflows 62-74 Notes to the accounts

Reference and administrative details

President

His Eminence Cardinal Vincent Nichols

Trading name

Pact

Vice President

Archbishop John Wilson

Trustees and directors

Paul Booton

Cathy Corcoran OBE (appointed 8 July 2020) Margaret Cripps (appointed 23 Sept. 2020) Chris Garside (resigned 30 Sept. 2020) Alastair Gordon, honorary treasurer Paula Harriott

Margaret Hodgson (resigned 30 Sept. 2020) Tom Leman Sarah Mann, vice-chair Cleo Metcalf (appointed 23 Sept. 2020) Nick Smart Phil Taylor OBE, chair Wilf Weeks OBE

Chief executive and company secretary

Andrew Keen-Downs

Deputy chief executive and Pact Futures managing director

Charity number 219278

Company number

356443

Registered office

29 Peckham Road, London, SE5 8UA

Solicitors

Bircham Dyson Bell

50 Broadway, London, SW1H 0BL

Auditor

Haysmacintyre LLP

Chartered Accountants, Statutory Auditor 10 Queen Street Place, London, EC4R 1AG

Bankers

CAF Bank 25 Kings Hill Avenue, Kings Hill, West Malling, ME19 4JQ

Ellen Green

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

The Board of Trustees (the Board) presents its report, incorporating the directors’ report and the audited consolidated accounts of Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact), for the year ended 31 March 2021.

Objectives and activities

Pact’s purpose

Pact’s stated objectives are:

What we do

Pact is a national charity that provides support to prisoners, people with convictions, and their families through a range of services across England and Wales. During 2020-21, our services included:

Our work is informed by evidence-based learning, desistance theory and research, and continuous consultation with our service users. Our ethos and values draw their strength from Catholic Social Teaching, principally the belief in the innate dignity and worth of every human being, no matter what they may have done; the belief that human beings thrive through living in healthy relationships, including stable families, and the ‘preferential option for the poor’, being the Christian obligation to care for the poor and vulnerable. We work with all people in need, of any faith or no faith.

Values and mission

Our mission is to support prisoners and their families to make a fresh start and to minimise

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

the harm that can be caused by imprisonment on people with convictions, on children, families and on communities.

Our values are:

Strategy and vision

In 2020/21 we remained focused on our ‘Routes to Change’ strategy but, of course, were forced to rapidly adapt our plans and models of service in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the consequent prison regime restrictions. We have had to renegotiate all our contracts and many of our grants and pause several planned new innovations. We have had to develop new practices, procedures, and ways of working. This has been a year in which we have had no choice but to evolve, in which we have learned and developed through responding to unexpected challenges, and in which our relationships and networks of support have sustained us. We are grateful to the Ministry of Justice and HM Prison & Probation Service (HMPPS) for their continued support for our work as we were temporarily forced to close our prison visits cafés, which in normal times contribute significantly to the costs of delivering our prison-based family services. We are also grateful to the many charitable trusts and foundations who have acted with speed and shown extraordinary flexibility and kindness at a time of crisis. And we are grateful to the Catholic dioceses, parishes, individual donors and other friends and supporters, whose continued kindness enabled us to meet unanticipated costs and challenges, so that we have been able to continue to deliver much-needed services.

Despite the challenges of the year, we have continued to develop several exciting innovations, showing the way forward in prisoner care and rehabilitation. We describe some of these on page 8.

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

Strategy review: lessons from lockdown and taking stock

As we approached the end of the year, we undertook a comprehensive internal review. We held over 60 facilitated conversations with people who have lived experience of prison, volunteers, staff, and Trustees, including our Pact Futures Directors and workforce. We reflected on all we had learned during the year and asked everyone to consider whether our ‘Routes to Change’ strategy still provided us with the right vision and routemap in the light of all that we had experienced. We also reflected on what we might need to do differently to continue to fulfil our mission. We explored, on the basis of our charitable objects, powers, and mission, and the capability and know-how of our people, what additional forms of support and service we could develop, and how we would ensure that our frontline staff and volunteers have the support and resources to enable them to focus on what they do best, while ensuring that we can deliver excellent, lifeenhancing services, that are safe, well-managed, and compliant with the growing list of quality assurance and legal requirements.

What Pact people said

The feedback was rich and varied, but here are a few key messages:

What is it like to work for Pact?

“Pact lives by its values – it is authentic and genuine and ‘does what it says on the tin’.” This was a very strong theme.

“I like working for an organisation whose vision and values I share.”

“The focus on relationships is key.”

“Pact is a community. We’re like a family.”

“The work is really hard, we feel stretched, and we need more resources and support.”

“Sometimes we are working with our statutory partners (prison and Probation). Sometimes it feels like there is a clash of cultures and that our work is not understood.”

“We would welcome less monitoring and evaluation/form filling for funders and commissioners, and more time to devote to the real work.”

What have we learned from the pandemic and the lockdown?

Pact workers expressed huge anxiety and concern about the needs of our service users, both prisoners who are ‘locked down’, and families who are ‘locked out’. There is a growing concern about the impact on mental health, family relationships, and planning and preparedness for release.

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

They questioned whether the value of what we provide as a service is properly understood.

“It has been frustrating when we have not been permitted to work inside the prisons. Working ‘remotely’ can have some advantages, but the lack of technology in prisons makes it very difficult to reach service users inside.”

“We want to get back inside.”

“The rapid adoption of technology by Pact has had huge benefits as well as drawbacks. For staff who work in very small teams and are spread around the country, the technology has enabled us to have more facetime with managers and colleagues than ever before. We are reducing our carbon footprint and travel costs. However, we are a people organisation, and sometimes there is no substitute for being together with the people we serve.”

Workers have felt cared for. “Pact has made our safety and well-being a priority.”

Pact workers praised the leadership team. But some wanted to see them out and about more.

Should we continue to seek growth?

“What we do makes a difference, so yes, we should do more of it.”

“Growth is good, provided we don’t stray off our mission.”

“We should try to grow, to respond to needs, but we need more resources and capacity to ensure we can maintain the quality of our services.”

Whatever we do, we need to stick to our values and focus on our mission.

Is the Routes to Change Vision still fit for purpose? Is there anything you would change?

The feedback was clear – yes, it is, and we should follow it through. We should, however, reconsider our target of mobilising 1,000 active volunteers, in the light of losing so many from our services during Covid-19. More focus on quality than quantity is needed.

Priorities for 2021

We will continue to work to our Routes to Change Vision (see page 6), but we will develop and launch a new national volunteering strategy with a new set of goals to replace our target of mobilising 1,000 active volunteers.

A fresh vision for volunteering

We will set out our new vision for volunteering, including active citizenship, peer-to-peer inprison volunteering, and a new faith-in-action programme. We aspire to excellence in volunteer management, and view volunteering as a means to engage communities with

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

our mission. This will be more important than ever as pressure on services and resources grow in the wake of Covid-19. If ever there was a time for a renewed focus on working together for the Common Good, it is now.

Our Routes to Change Vision

1. We will show the way forward in rehabilitation based on what it means to be a human being.

Our ambition is to change the way that rehabilitation is done in England and Wales. We will demonstrate a ‘Family First’ approach - showing how it can be done and measuring the impact. We will build a new model of working in prison and in the community, providing a continuum of care from the court to post-release. In doing so we will enable families to survive the impact of prison and build, maintain and strengthen good relationships and relationship skills. We will put Lord Farmer’s recommendations into action and be the antidote to a justice system that so often breaks up families.

In achieving this ambition, we will have the courage to be counter-cultural and we will change the language: we won’t talk about ‘offenders’, we will talk about ‘people’.

2. We will mobilise 1,000 volunteers ( under review, as explained on page 5 )

We will ensure that every prisoner, ex-prisoner and family member we see can be offered one-to-one support by a member of staff or volunteer. To achieve this, we will double the number of trained and active Pact volunteers, to have a minimum of 1,000 volunteers walking alongside our service users and offering ‘routes to change’. Our volunteers will be people who share our values and demonstrate good judgement, reliability, and compassion. We will renew and deepen our commitment to excellence in volunteer management and support.

3. We will be excellent at collaborative working.

Over the next five years we will renew our efforts to widen and strengthen our networks, partnerships and relationships and encourage a shared sense of pride in our achievements.

Our work is dependent on the goodwill and cooperation of HMPPS staff including prison Governors. We work with chaplains, court officials, judges, police representatives and academics as well as with parliamentarians, commissioners from the public, private and voluntary sectors and the media. We work collegiately with other charities. Most importantly we work with the people we serve to support them to find their own solutions. We will build extensive networks of support and continue to grow awareness of our brand.

4. We will work to the principle of ‘not about us without us’.

We will not speak on behalf of the people we serve but instead provide opportunities for service users’ voices to be heard. We will support, facilitate and equip as necessary,

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

the people we serve to speak for themselves. This will be embedded as core Pact practice.

We will continue to demonstrate our commitment to meaningful service user participation in service development and design; in reviewing our performance and in our communications with Government, the media and people in authority. We will continue to listen to our service users and empower them to be their own advocates. We will respect the expertise of lived experience.

5. We will empower our people to achieve excellence.

We recognise that the people who work for Pact do the most difficult and demanding work in challenging environments with little public appreciation. We understand that the first principle of caring for others is to care for ourselves. We will do all we can to empower the people who work for us to deliver excellence in their work. We will enable them to develop their talents. We will hear their feedback and strive to remove the obstacles that get in their way. We will ensure Pact workers – whether paid or voluntary – feel safe, supported, equipped and competent. We will ensure that they feel that they belong to a team and feel proud to be a part of Pact.

6. We will stay true.

We will continue to ensure that we recruit and manage people based on their personal values, authenticity and integrity as much as their competence. The core competence of every Pact worker is the capability to listen, reflect, learn and develop.

We continually seek ways to test our actions against our mission, vision and values and we continue developing as a ‘learning organisation’: we will continue to listen to our service users, colleagues, partners and key stakeholders. Our service users told us that the people we recruit should be well-informed and expert – but also genuine, caring, non-judgemental and dependable. We will ensure that the Pact brand is a guarantee of these qualities.

We will also continue to demonstrate our complete commitment to full equality of opportunity for all and ensuring our services are available to everyone who needs them. We are committed to working for a society in which the innate dignity of every person is upheld and defended regardless of faith, gender, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability or other characteristics.

7. We will remember and care for our roots.

Pact is a diverse and fully inclusive modern charity which is firmly rooted in the Christian faith and inspired by Catholic Social Teaching. This is the historical and living source of our work and values.

We will continue to nurture and strengthen our roots and networks of support within the Catholic community and more widely.

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

“Pact is the major Catholic charity providing support to prisoners and their families, working in most prisons across England and Wales. This work is a direct expression of our discipleship and a very concrete expression of our desire to serve the Lord in those who are most vulnerable.” – Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Pact’s President

In 2021-22, we will:

We will continue to innovate and show the way forward for services to keep people safe, reduce reoffending, and give people the chance of a fresh start. This will include a number of significant programmes to establish and demonstrate best practice:

For men in prison

For women in prison

For young men in prison

For children and families

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

Keeping people safe in prison

Our activities

Pact provides support to prisoners and their families by operating a range of services including prison-based family casework and personalised casework support; prison Visitors’ Centres; prison- and community-based relationship and parenting education programmes; ‘Through the Gate’ mentoring and befriending programmes; children’s play services in prison visits settings; refreshment services; and arts and educational initiatives. We also support practitioners through providing training and advice, and we inform and advise policy and decision-makers. We continue to innovate and test out new approaches and ways of achieving the best possible outcomes.

We manage the national Prisoners’ Families Helpline under contract to HMPPS. We also continue to provide our own free, confidential befriending service for prisoners’ families, providing advocacy and one-to-one emotional and practical care and support via a team of specially vetted, trained, and supervised volunteers.

In London and North Wales, we have trained volunteers working in a growing number of courts and in the community to support the families of people who are on trial and in custody.

We also distribute small discretionary welfare grants for individuals in need, as we have done throughout our history. We have continued to do this work throughout the Covid-19 pandemic and have expanded our grant-making, including creating a Welfare Grants Unit, to provide responsive support to people who have urgent needs.

Our work is broken down into four key areas:

  1. Building stronger families and safer communities by means of high-quality family services, targeted support, volunteer befrienders and partnership working, thereby reducing the risk of reoffending and intergenerational offending.

  2. Reducing risk of harm to prisoners and their children through the provision of family support services, particularly during the early days of custody.

  3. Removing barriers and increasing awareness in public services to achieve improved outcomes for our service users through supporting practitioners from the voluntary, public and private sectors via training, resources, information and advice.

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

  1. Influencing commissioning, policy and legislation through our role as an advocate for the people we serve; through building the evidence base of outcomes from our work, and through constructive dialogue with commissioners and government officials.

Public benefit statement

All of the activities described further Pact’s purposes for the public benefit and the Trustees consider they have complied with the duty in Section 17 of the Charities Act 2011 to have due regard to public benefit guidance published by the Charity Commission.

Our footprint

In March 2020, the world changed for us all. The arrival of Covid-19 meant that we were forced to adapt our service delivery models practically overnight – and the seismic impact of the pandemic cemented remote working as the ‘new normal’ for the duration of the financial year. With face-to-face support no longer a viable option, our Family Services teams worked at pace to find innovative ways to provide for prisoners and their families.

The national map of Pact services remained largely stable throughout the year with a range of services depending on local and national commissioning and grant funding arrangements. During the year, we provided family support services (remotely or in person) in 37 prisons in England and Wales. In 21 of these we were responsible for managing the Visitors’ Centres (which we call ‘Family and Visitors’ Centres’). During the few months where in-person visits were permitted, we supported a total of 8,157 family members including 1,447 children[1] to maintain contact with their loved ones in prison. This figure is understandably a fraction of the previous year’s number due to the impact of Covid-19.

In some of these prisons, and in others where we do not manage the Visitors’ Centre, our workers provide family casework, known as our ‘Family Engagement Service’. In some prisons we are also contracted to provide basic café services in the prison Visits Halls. In many prisons our volunteers, or staff who are charitably funded or funded through the income of our catering operation, facilitate a supervised play service. However, due to the restrictions imposed throughout the pandemic, all our café and play services have been suspended for the duration of the financial year.

In five other prisons we have chosen to partner with and sub-contract some of our family support services, including Visitors’ Centre management and family engagement, to local or regional charities. In these prisons – and in many more which have family services run by other charities – we continue to operate through our education programmes, CFO3 casework services and ‘Through the Gate’ resettlement services.

1 This is the total number of individual family members and friends who have visited prisoners using Pact’s services. As there is no national data capture system in place for prison visiting, this figure includes some repeat visitors and is therefore higher than the number of unique individuals using our Visitors’ Centres and related family services.

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

We are delighted to have worked with partners Nepacs (HMP Low Newton), Hacro (HMP The Mount) and Rushcliffe CVS (HMP Whatton) to deliver these services. We are also pleased to have continued to strengthen our relationships with Action for Children and Nepacs, our partners within the women’s estate.

Achievements and performance: delivering meaningful outcomes for service users

We deliver services across the entire criminal justice journey, offering support to prisoners, people with convictions, defendants, and their families, from arrest right through to release. We also provide wrap-around services that offer vital emotional and practical support to people at any point of their experience of the justice system. On top of that, we run many exciting, innovative projects across England and Wales thanks for the generous support of charitable trusts and special grants.

In the following section, you will find an update on the work we have been doing across the justice sector in 2020/21.

Arrest

Minimising the harmful impact of arrest on families

Hear Our Voice: Working with police to minimise harm to children and young people

In 2015/16 we first embarked on our ‘Hear Our Voice’ project, generously funded by Comic Relief and the Pilgrim Trust, which aimed to raise awareness and improve practice for children affected by familial imprisonment. The project built on our previous advocacy work and the development of The Children’s Charter, which was created in collaboration with a group of young people who had been affected by the imprisonment of a family member and who wanted their voices heard on the criminal justice system.

There were a number of strands to this project, but one key element was the development and delivery of training for police. Through this training, we aimed to raise awareness and improve practice to minimise the harm caused to children when arrests and raids are carried out in their family homes.

Over the years that followed we delivered training to hundreds of police officers across the Metropolitan Police in London and Avon and Somerset Police.

In 2020/21 we saw renewed interest in this area of work and received requests for this training package from Sussex Police and Surrey Police. We are also exploring some dates to train City of London Police, West Midlands Police and Dyfed-Powys Police.

While we still operate under Covid-19 restrictions, we are scheduling initial video training sessions, but, as restrictions ease, we are looking forward to delivering face-to-face training with these forces, as well as others.

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

Court

Supporting defendants and their families to navigate the complex justice system

‘A Way Home’ | ‘Ffordd Adref’: supporting defendants’ families in London and North Wales

Thanks to the generosity of The Albert Gubay Charitable Foundation, for the last couple of years we have been delivering our court support service, which had previously only been delivered in London (supported by a range of trusts and charitable foundations), to support defendants’ families in North Wales.

Our volunteers across both services offer guidance, practical information and emotional support to families whose loved one is likely to be facing a custodial sentence at the point of their court appearance. This service can make a huge difference to families, who often find the court experience to be confusing and frightening and receive little support or information at an extremely distressing time.

By working with families from trial to imprisonment we can also help to strengthen and maintain family ties and reduce delays in organising contact; in the event of a loved one being imprisoned, our volunteers can connect families to wider community support services, and prisoners can be referred onto our Family Engagement services to receive support to maintain their relationships with their families and children.

Sadly, in 2020/21 the pandemic hit our courts service, and the courts in general, very hard. In the first lockdown of 2020 courts closed in England and Wales, bringing our courts service to a complete standstill.

As courts started to reopen throughout the year, returning to business as usual has been problematic, as court managers have attempted to deal with the backlog of cases and maintain a Covid-19 secure environment. While strategies are currently underway to remobilise the services, plans have now commenced for the Prison Reform Trust to complete an initial evaluation of both our regional services to help inform decisions regarding the future direction of service delivery and funding support.

Prison

Supporting people in prison to strengthen and maintain relationships

Providing personalised support in custody (Family Engagement Workers)

Having invested in a digital phone system and a secure web-based case management system we had the technology in place for our prison-based Family Engagement staff to transition to home-based working within the first week of the pandemic. During 2020/21 we had 16 Family Engagement Workers (FEWs), 29 Family Engagement Managers (FEMs) and 25 Family Support Workers across England and Wales, all of whom seamlessly adapted to working from home.

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

We quickly created dedicated email addresses for each of the 37 prisons where Pact operates – monitored daily by our highly trained staff - to establish a reliable and sustainable remote service. Through this service we then provided remote personalised support to 2,800 men and women in prison, and their family members, to help them cope with a sentence and to address family issues. This is just 19% fewer than the previous year despite the challenges of offering remote support. In total, our teams responded to 6,152 separate enquiries from prisoners during the year. The individualised support offered by our FEWs and FEMs is proven to improve prisoners’ emotional well-being, to motivate compliance with the prison regime and to reduce the risk of self-harm, violence, and disruptive behaviour.

Despite significantly reducing our physical presence in prison establishments we have received some heartfelt comments from individuals who have benefitted from our Family Engagement services. These are a testament to the hard work of our staff in challenging and emotionally charged roles in these unprecedented times.

The following message is from one of the families supported by our team at HMP Wandsworth, which was the first prison to temporarily restart in-person visits from 20 July 2020:

“I wanted to take the time and thank you all so very much for all the amazing support and advice you provided for me […] and my children, during the most difficult and challenging time in my life.

You were there for me at my lowest point and I can’t thank you enough, no words can describe how grateful I am to you all, and all the lovely uplifting chats I would have with [you].

I can assure you that you will be missed dearly, especially by the children.

I still remember the first day I met [the Pact Family Engagement Worker], she was extremely caring and empathetic towards my unprecedented and foreign circumstances. She had taken the time to investigate and arrange my first visit as I had no luck on my side. She was calm and provided me with all the information and advice in a calm and collected manner. This was extremely helpful in helping me get through this awful ordeal.

[The Pact Family Engagement Manager was] equally wonderful, and I recall the time when my son had received the highest grades at the end of the year and was recognised for this by his school with trophies and medals. You were so kind and thoughtful and arranged to give a small gift to my son for his achievements. This was such a heart-warming gesture, and my son was over the moon.”

As the lockdown started to ease in the community and prisons began to prepare for restricted in-person visits, our teams sprang into action to support families adapt to the new visiting regime. Our FEWs and FEMs returned to our Visitors’ Centres in the prison grounds to answer calls from worried family members about what to expect, and during 2020/21, our Visitors’ Centre staff supported 2,283 families who got in touch with queries or concerns.

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

We invested resources and funds into producing a series of family-friendly posters - featuring our children’s character William the Bear - to explain the new measures to keep people safe. We made sure that Pact workers were more easily identifiable and purchased umbrellas to keep people dry or shaded from the sun if they had to queue outside.

In those prisons where visits were still not permitted – including HMP Nottingham, HMP Gartree and HMP Onley - our dedicated staff and volunteers used their time onsite to paint and decorate the Visitors’ Centres to make them as welcoming as possible for the families’ return.

Supporting prisoners to maintain relationships with their children

With the ongoing suspension of in-person prison visits making it more challenging than ever to maintain strong family relationships, we knew we needed to find new avenues for prisoners and their children to keep in touch. During 2020/21 our Family Engagement teams pooled ideas and resources to come up with innovative ways of keeping prisoners and their families connected.

As Purple Visits video calls were rolled out across the prison estate our highly trained staff worked to support families and children to use and understand the new technology. After hearing from many families that the facial recognition software was problematic, we created a series of Purple Visits ‘top tips’ that we shared on social media to support future users in avoiding common pitfalls.

Our Family Engagement team at HMP Berwyn also began developing a series of ‘conversation starters’ including questions and games aimed at adults, teenagers and younger children to help keep families talking despite the artificial nature of Purple Visits.

At HMP Lindholme, our Family Engagement Worker began harnessing the power of reading to keep prisoners and their children connected. Through sending out two copies of the same book – one to the child and one to their parent in prison – we enabled prisoners to read with their children over a phone or video call, and empowered families to keep this up with their own favourite books. The feedback we received on Twitter is testament to the impact that this innovative idea had:

“I have been in touch with Pact at HMP Lindholme… [The Family Engagement Manager] has been incredible. Replied to my emails and kept me updated. Even suggested story time over the phone which I wasn’t aware of. She’s now sending us out some books. Thank you!” – The mother of a child with a parent in HMP Lindholme

“We got… two books and my OH [other half] got the same books so he read over the phone. I’ve also done this personally through Amazon (ordered him kids’ books and I’ve got the same)! Hope it helps!” – The mother of a child with a parent in HMP Lindholme

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

“[I am] so happy with this package for my daughter. She loves it and no doubt she will be having me read the books before bed. Thanks Melissa! You’re a star!” – A mother who received some books for her child

Family Days

Family Days are usually a cornerstone of Pact’s work with prisons and offer families a visiting experience that is unlike a standard prison visit: prisoners and their families can enjoy meaningful interaction with each other, and everyone is able to leave their chair and hug their relatives. During 2020/21 we were unable to run any Family Days due to Covid-19 but we are working hard to ensure that we can resume Family Days as soon as it is safe to do so.

Virtual play sessions

With face-to-face supervised play services suspended due to the pandemic, our trained staff and volunteers worked to find innovative solutions to support children with therapeutic activities in a remote setting. We focused on developing activities that would require minimal supervision from adults at home, such as card making and model building. We also created ‘Play Packs’ containing all the resources for these virtual play activities, which were posted to each child ahead of their virtual play session, to remove any financial barriers to accessing this support.

In 2020/21 our trained volunteers and staff at HMP Brixton provided over 102 hours of virtual play to 25 children and our playworker at HMP Wandsworth supported 47 children through recorded play sessions and stories.

Parenting and relationship education

During 2020/21 our Groupwork team invested time and resources into adapting our relationship and parenting education and family learning programmes for in-cell delivery. Responding quickly to the changing landscape of the pandemic, we continued to deliver our specialist education courses remotely throughout the London prison estate under the new Prison Education Framework ‘Dynamic Purchasing System’. We were able to remotely support prisoners in HMPs Brixton, High Down, Pentonville, Thameside, Wandsworth and Wormwood Scrubs and HMP/YOI Isis to complete 522 of our in-cell booklets.

We also used this adapted delivery model to successfully work remotely with a group of 16 prisoners at HMP Manchester, providing courses to help fathers build, develop, or sustain relationships with their children.

We look forward to once again being able to offer in-person groupwork when it becomes safe to do so.

Development of group work

Alongside adapting our existing offering of specialist courses for in-cell delivery, the Groupwork team this year began developing a suite of remote support resources for the

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

women’s estate, working closely with our Family Engagement teams to offer positive relationship education and learning to the women.

We developed five individual booklets:

We were also pleased to work in collaboration with the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC), Advance, and Women in Prison to expand our groupwork offering to women in the community with some experience of the criminal justice system. Although we had hoped to create a series of in-person workshops and interventions to be delivered at Women’s Centres across London, restrictions on face-to-face contact brought about by the pandemic meant we had to adapt our delivery model. We therefore created four specialist booklets that could be completed by women with minimal (remote) support:

Thanks to generous funding from MOPAC we were able to print and distribute copies of each of these booklets to every women’s prison in England, and to our partners, Advance, and Women in Prison, for use by their skilled caseworkers supporting women in the community.

The positive impact of our groupwork courses can best be illustrated by feedback from participants:

“This course [Good Relationships] should be more broadcasted because it really does give you a better insight into a good relationship. I would recommend this booklet to others because it has opened my eyes to a lot of faults on my part and has given me a better understanding of communication skills. It was spot on

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

actually, it made me understand that feelings or to open up is quite healthy for a relationship.” – A resident at HMP Wandsworth

“It was refreshing to be able to begin the process of reconciling my emotions [about the past] with information gained from these booklets.” - A resident at HMP Wandsworth

“It makes me feel prepared about going home when I leave prison. It made me realise why I got myself in prison in the first place.” – A resident at HMP Wandsworth

Supporting prisoners with the most complex needs: HMPPS ESF CFO3 programme (European Social Fund Co-Financing Organisation)

We have continued to achieve impressive outcomes in the CFO3 programme, a service we deliver as part of the multi-agency team led by Ixion Holdings. In the past year, our teams working across prisons across the West Midlands and South East (Surrey, Sussex, and Kent) have consistently exceeded expectations, engaging with and providing support to 537 of the ‘hardest to reach’ people either in custody or in the community upon release and recording over 1,100 positive outcomes in support of their personal development journeys.

These results are even more extraordinary in the context of the pandemic which drastically limited the team’s reach. They are also remarkable because the prisoners who were enrolled into this programme are those with the most complex needs – who are not engaging with the prison regime or rehabilitative programmes/courses; those with poor family support and/or social networks; often those who are not leaving their cells and are therefore the most likely to reoffend on release. They are, sadly, often referred to as people who are ‘hard to reach’ or who have ‘nothing and nobody’.

For our CFO3 programme team, no two participant journeys are the same: we adapt our approach and tailor interventions to an individual’s need. Therefore, positive outcomes vary from addressing basic life skills (including personal hygiene, motivation, and selfesteem) through more structured interventions designed to support prisoners’ transition into mainstream activities, to entry-level education. Through these interventions we might see someone begin engaging with the main prison regime, reconnecting with their family, or ultimately gaining meaningful employment upon release.

Our work can have an incredible impact on people who are often seen as ‘hopeless cases’. This is just one example from a Case Manager working with Lucy (not her real name):

Lucy had been in prison for seven years when I first met her; about halfway through her 15-year sentence. I soon learned that 15 years was also Lucy’s age when she had been arrested. Despite keeping out of trouble for the three years after her arrest, Lucy was tried when she turned 18 – so she was serving the sentence of an adult.

Lucy’s Senior Probation Officer was the one who asked me to work with Lucy as part of the CFO3 project: the plan was to help her build up her self-esteem and

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

confidence, and develop her thinking skills, problem solving and motivation. But first I’d have to gain Lucy’s trust, as her past experiences meant she was highly suspicious of anyone new – and often rejected offers of help and support.

Lucy’s position was understandable, and heart-breaking: she had been the victim of sexual abuse for most of her early life and was placed into the care of Social Services aged just 7. When she turned 13, she met a group of men who she thought she could trust – but who were in fact a gang who groomed, raped and abused her, including feeding her drugs and alcohol to keep her compliant with their demands. She became so entrenched in this way of life that this behaviour was normalised for her. At 15, Lucy managed to escape the gang and report them to the police – but her involvement could not be overlooked, and she was arrested.

I started making regular appointments to see and speak to Lucy and, gradually, over time, we reached a place where she believed I was on her side. Once we’d established this trust, we were able to start working together on strategies to improve her self-esteem and motivation, and after a few months, Lucy started to take ownership of her own development and plans for her future. I was delighted when Lucy began taking educational courses and getting the qualifications that she needed to work towards a Foundation degree in management. She told me she was also receiving high praise for her work, which was a huge boost for her, and made her even more determined to succeed.

Since we’ve been working together, Lucy has been granted permission to move to an ‘open’ prison where she has been able to apply for Release on Temporary Licence and find work and volunteering placements in the community. As a consequence, she has been able to secure a job interview with a well-known logistics company – and now has a confirmed offer of employment on release. I couldn’t be more pleased for her.

Lucy’s future now looks bright. Her ambition is to study a degree in management as she wants to pursue a career in warehousing. After all that she’s achieved so far, I have no doubt she’ll succeed.

Release

Building safer communities through our post-release services

Supporting prisoners ‘Through the Gate’

The ‘Through the Gate’ service provided by Pact Futures CIC (our subsidiary) is a lifeline for men and women who are leaving custody and experiencing a range of complex issues (such as homelessness, drug and/or alcohol addiction and mental and/or physical health concerns) often with no other support networks. With many prisoners this year finding themselves released into a world that has changed beyond all recognition due to the pandemic, the need for this kind of support has been particularly acute.

In 2020/21 our ‘Through the Gate’ services covering the whole of Wales, the South West and West Yorkshire, and ‘Meet at the Gate’ in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, provided

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

telephone-based mentoring support to 1,834 individuals on release – a 20% increase compared to last year. This significant achievement is testament to the flexibility of our mentoring team whose quick transition to remote service delivery enabled them to harness the time previously used to travel to face-to-face meetings to engage with an unprecedented number of prison leavers in need.

The practical and emotional support that our ‘Through the Gate’ mentors provide can make all the difference to someone during those first crucial hours, days, and months after release. The following story is from one of Pact’s ‘Through the Gate’ mentors working with Simon (not his real name):

“When Simon was released from prison, he had nowhere to call home. With just £46 in his pocket, the standard discharge grant for prisoners, he made his way to his Probation appointment to find out whether he would have a roof over his head that night.

The only accommodation available for Simon was a hostel in another town. Despite being desperate for a warm bed, Simon knew he couldn’t accept a place there: he knew that he would face threats of violence and the temptation of drugs at the hostel. With a heavy heart, he refused the place, and the council revoked their obligation to find him somewhere to sleep.

Disheartened, but determined not to put himself back in danger, Simon walked to his parents’ house. He knew he wouldn’t receive a warm welcome. His heroin addiction meant he had stolen them from them in the past, and he had hurt them countless times. Unwilling to let Simon sleep in the house, his parents suggested that he slept in the greenhouse at the bottom of the garden. At least he would be out of the rain. They also let him make a call – to me.

I had first heard about Simon a few months before, while he was still in prison. In normal circumstances, I might have visited Simon to help him prepare for his release, and then met him at the prison gate. But because of Covid-19 restrictions, this wasn’t possible. I had only been able to email Simon to let him know about Pact’s Through the Gate support, and I hadn’t heard anything in response before his release.

When Simon finally called me, it was great to hear from him. He explained how he ended up in the greenhouse and said he was worried because he’d not been able to pick up his medication from the City Centre - he knew that he always ran into trouble when he went into town, so he had stayed away.

The first thing I did was arrange for Simon’s prescription to be sent to the town where his parents lived. I was keenly aware that Simon needed somewhere permanent to stay, so I also began contacting local organisations that might be able to help.

I also needed to help Simon in the short-term. He had nothing: no money of his own and no clothes other than the prison clothes he was released in. There was no bed in the greenhouse, and it was bitter cold outside, so he was freezing at night. He

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

had no mobile phone, so we had to speak using his parents’ house phone, which caused a lot of tension.

I applied for one of Pact’s welfare grants: a small amount of emergency funding that could help him to buy a few crucial items that would make a huge difference to him: a sleeping bag, a camp bed, some clothes, a mobile phone with some credit on it, and some food. Fortunately, the application was approved within hours, and I was able to purchase these essential items for Simon straight away.

I was able to take the items to Simon’s parents’ house and drop them off on the driveway outside. Simon was delighted. He said nobody had ever helped him like this before, and that I’d gone above and beyond what he could have expected. In that moment, he felt as though he had real hope of making a fresh start.

Pact’s Through the Gate support is designed to be temporary, so my contact with Simon came to an end in the following weeks, after I had referred him to a wealth of other organisations to support him with his mental and physical health, employment, and the all-important housing. My hope for all the people I work with is that they stay safe, and well, and on a new path after I leave them. But I know that life isn’t perfect. No matter what happens, if he ever needed help again, we would be here. It’s part of the Pact ethos to treat people as human beings and not criminals, full stop: we don’t give up on people and that’s brilliant.”

We have also supported 416 service users through our Family Resettlement services in Cumbria and Lancashire – a 75% increase on the previous year - and 85 men and 84 women in the community through our community-based mentoring programme within the Thames Valley.

Every step of the way

Supporting those affected by the justice system with our wrap-around services, every step of the way

Providing digital information for prisoners’ families

We continued to provide vital digital information for prisoners’ families through our online Visitors’ Guides for prisons across England and Wales. These guides contain basic useful information about each prison but in 2020/21 took on increased significance as an essential source of information about changes to prison visits – including the roll-out of Purple Visits video calls across the estate. Our service users tell us that much of the information found elsewhere online can be out of date, so we remained committed to updating our digital Visitors’ Guides as soon as possible and always within 72 hours of being notified of a change. For much of the financial year we were the sole provider of detailed up to date information about social visits across the prison estate.

Over the course of the year 80,502 people looked at one or more of our individual Visitors’ Guides. You can find the guides at www.prisonadvice.org.uk/prison-visitors-guides.

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

Providing resources for prisoners and their families

With 23-hour lockdowns in place across the prison estate, including the suspension of activities such as education and work, we identified a clear need for in-cell resources to help alleviate boredom and support the overall wellbeing of prisoners. We quickly set to work creating a collection of basic ‘distraction’ resources, including quizzes, games, and origami (paper folding) booklets. These resources were originally offered online so that prisons - and families on the outside - could access, download, and distribute them as quickly as possible; however, as the lockdown continued, we invested in getting the booklets professionally printed and distributed across the prison estates.

Alongside these resources we also developed a brand new ‘Pact Packets’ series for children: a 21-day Superhero Challenge aimed at younger children and a 21-day Journal Challenge aimed at older children/teenagers. These were shared online with families and with the Prisoners’ Families Helpline as a tool to engage parents in conversation with their children and a resource for parents who were struggling to support or entertain their children as the lockdown continued. The ‘Pact Packets’ were expanded to offer more varied distractions to prisoners in their cells: we developed more quizzes, workout booklets and creative writing challenges. During 2020/21, 3,663 individual people accessed our remote resources over 6,500 times through our website, and we sent out over 6,200 hard copies of these resources to prisoners and their families across England and Wales.

‘More activity packs received today; the residents are really enjoying the distractions! Thank you to everyone who is sending them, they most definitely are being used and are very much appreciated.’ – An officer from HMP Sudbury

Drawing on Pact’s academic partnership with Sheffield University and our expertise in family learning, we also saw an opportunity to design a letter-writing booklet to support prisoners with lower-level literacy skills. Working in partnership with the Shannon Trust we developed a booklet to give guidance on how parents in prison can write to their children as well as maintain contact with family and friends through letter writing. We arranged for 20,000 copies of ‘Writing Home’ to be gifted to 52 prisons across England and Wales to support prisoners to keep in touch with their loved ones at a time when maintaining contact has never been more important.

Prior to the nationwide lockdown, Pact Futures CIC was also mobilising in preparation for delivery of relationship courses at HMP Bullingdon and across the London prison estate. Once again we saw an opportunity for innovation in delivering this contract and developed five brand new remote learning booklets which incorporate the themes of our courses: ‘Going Home’ (for prisoners preparing to leave prison); ‘Dads Reconnected’ (for fathers who want to improve their relationships with their children); and three booklets focusing on issues in relationships such as anger and stress, conflict, and communication. During 2020/21, we provided 1,076 remote learning booklets of which 522 were completed at the end of the financial year. This is a course completion rate of 49% which is impressive given the circumstances of the pandemic. We plan for these booklets to continue to form part of the Pact Group’s education offering beyond Covid-19.

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

Prisoners’ Families Helpline

In 2020/21 we continued managing the HMPPS-contracted national Prisoners’ Families Helpline and digital information service for prisoners’ families (a contract we acquired in August 2018). Through this service, our team of highly trained staff and volunteers provide information, advice and signposting to callers 7 days a week on a wide range of issues from booking visits and sending property to what happens after a loved one is arrested or released from prison. The service also manages safeguarding concerns through an agreed escalation process with HMPPS through to Safer Custody teams.

On average, our team dealt with roughly 2,250 calls per month, responded to over 400 emails per month and provided digital information to an average of 21,000 website visitors every month.

We know that the support and straightforward information offered through the Helpline provides much-needed relief to the thousands of families who contact us, who have been left feeling bewildered and confused by the prison system.

The feedback we receive from callers demonstrates the impact of the Helpline’s support on prisoners’ family members:

“I have called twice, and the first call was really helpful, but I am emailing about the second call which was excellent and worthy of recognition for the way it was handled and managed by the team member in question.

The Helpline operator on the day I called was excellent. My son is in prison, and I’m trying to help him sort out stuff in relation to a broken-down relationship and lack of access to his own daughter, where communication has broken down completely and it has become extremely complex. I was really desperate for a starting point and a way forward and I found it via the call with yourselves and within the interaction with your call handler, it was positively brilliant.

I had a lot of information and background to share as quickly and as concisely as I could and the Helpline operator listened and took it all in. She shared some links and routes for me to follow and was very sympathetic to the circumstances I was in and that was really appreciated.

I know quality when I see it and this was quality and it is worth praising indeed. Please pass on my thanks and best wishes. Much appreciated and thank you again.”

Supporting prisoners’ families to cope with their loved one’s sentence

The past year has been extraordinarily difficult for prisoners’ families. With the constant uncertainty around when they will see their loved ones again in person, and ever-present concerns around their loved one’s wellbeing, many have needed extra emotional support. Prisoners’ families already face a great deal of isolation due to the stigma of having a loved one who has committed a crime, and often describe the experience as

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

serving a ‘hidden sentence’. Coping with this on top of the isolation we have all faced during lockdown has been extremely tough on people.

In 2020/21 we saw a huge demand for our befriending service, where trained volunteers provide emotional support over the phone on a regular basis to family members struggling to cope with the impact of their loved one’s sentence. To meet this demand, as of February 2021 we had recruited and trained 52 active volunteers who have supported around 150 people throughout the past year. Our befriending service has also now been made available to callers who are aged 14-18 years.

The following story is an example of the type of support we have offered to people throughout the pandemic, and is a testament to the emotional and psychological impact of the service:

When Lizzy’s husband went to prison, she was deeply shaken. He was her rock. He had taken care of everything, all the practical tasks involved in running a home - paying the bills, dealing with repairs - and when he was gone, she realised just how much she relied on him. Finding herself suddenly alone, Lizzy’s mental health declined rapidly. She was frightened and had begun talking to herself just to give herself a bit of comfort. Too ashamed to reach out to friends who she felt might judge her, Lizzy contacted the Pact team.

Pact’s Befriending Co-ordinator, Maria, answered Lizzy’s call. Recognising that Lizzy was suffering deeply and very isolated, she talked to Lizzy about how our befriending service might help.

Although a little hesitant, Lizzy agreed to give it a go, and Maria matched her with Jade, one of our Befriending Volunteers.

Jade recalls:

“I first met Lizzy after her husband had been in prison for a few weeks. I could sense that she unsure whether I was committed to helping her, but, as time went on and she could see I was keeping our appointments and sending her reminders, I showed her she could trust me. Slowly, Lizzy began to open up about how hard things were for her.”

Through their regular calls, Jade soon realised that Lizzy had been living in total isolation. Jade was the only person Lizzy had had contact with since her husband went to prison, which had now been months. This isolation and the distress of coping with her husband’s sentence completely alone had begun to severely impact her mental and emotional wellbeing.

Lizzy was also struggling with the practicalities of running her home alone. Together, Jade and Lizzy began to set targets; small, achievable tasks which helped Lizzy gain confidence, such as setting up a bank account in her own name. Jade also helped Lizzy to set up video calls, meaning Lizzy could enjoy regular video contact with her husband in prison.

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

After five months of befriending support, Lizzy is getting ready to move on. She’s much more independent and confident and has begun to have contact with a few friends. Daily life is more manageable for her and she’s coping much better with the ‘hidden sentence’ faced by so many prisoners’ loved ones.

We are so grateful to our volunteer Befrienders, who represent a variety of different backgrounds, but who are alike in their capacity to be empathetic and non-judgmental, and happy to provide a listening ear. One of our Befriender volunteers, a retired grandfather, humbly told us:

“I’m not sure how useful I am. Mostly I just listen. But they keep talking to me so maybe what I’m doing is OK.”

Providing emergency grants to those in need during Covid-19

Thanks to the generous support of the Colyer-Fergusson Charitable Trust, the Albert Gubay Fund, Smallwood Trust and the London Housing Foundation, we have been able to offer emergency grants to people affected by imprisonment. This funding was awarded to us as a direct result of the Covid-19 pandemic as we anticipated that the issues that prison leavers and their families already face would be further exasperated throughout this difficult period.

Over the past year, we have issued £70,000 in emergency welfare grants to people in need. In 2020/21, 459 applications for the grants were successful.

The most common requests were for support to buy food and clothing, as well as basic phones and toiletries. Thanks to our highly efficient application process, we can provide emergency funds to people with a quick turnaround, often within 24 hours - something which many other providers are not able to do.

John’s story below demonstrates the difference that this funding can make to someone who is trying to rebuild their life and make a fresh start:

John is a 21-year-old, devoted single father of a toddler, struggling financially on benefits. He had been supported by a Pact volunteer for 6 months, after receiving a suspended sentence. He had clearly demonstrated how important being a father was to him, and he had worked hard to improve his life and be a good father to his young son.

John was struggling to pay his bills, and when the cooker in his housing broke down, he didn’t know what to do. He had no way of affording a new cooker, and he was denied a replacement by the Local Authority discretionary fund as they did not deem it as essential. He was worried that he was not going to be able to provide essential nutrients for his growing son and when he spoke to the Pact volunteer, he found himself becoming overwhelmed with emotion at the thought that he may not be able to cook his son mini-roast dinners on a Sunday – something he felt strongly he wanted to do as a father.

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

The Pact volunteer supported John in applying for Pact’s welfare grant so that he could replace his cooker, and he was delighted when his application was successful. Pact was able to purchase him a new cooker and provide him with a food voucher to stock up on essentials.

John was extremely grateful and repeatedly thanked the volunteer who had worked with him on the application. He told the volunteer that being able to sort this out had made him feel like a better father already, and he was excitedly researching lots of toddler friendly meals for his son that he could try out on the new cooker!

What’s new?

Leading the way with innovative approaches to how rehabilitation is done

Routes 2 Change

Our flagship ‘end-to-end’ integrated rehabilitation and resettlement programme at HMP Brixton, Routes 2 Change, continued to go from strength to strength this year, demonstrating that family work which bridges custody and the community is the ‘golden thread’ in the prospect of positive change for those coming into contact with the criminal justice system. We continued to provide support for prisoners, their children, families and significant others (subject to robust risk management) from induction, through custody and for up to six months post-release.

Of 904 prisoners who entered HMP Brixton in 2020/21, we triaged 34% (311). Due to Covid19 restrictions we had to do all our triaging remotely rather than in person. Out of all those we triaged, 196 (63%) went on to be supported by our Routes 2 Change programme and 115 (37%) did not wish to go any further.

In addition, we started to work with more prisoners coming to the end of their sentence. In 2020/21 we worked with 52 people on release and in the community, compared to 11 last year.

The following story demonstrates the type of work we do in our Routes 2 Change programme and the impact that it has:

Martin spent the majority of the last decade in and out of prison. He had struggled with addiction and had a fractured family life.

But when Martin came to HMP Brixton in 2020, he knew that something needed to change. He was determined to get out of prison and not ever come back.

When Martin came into Brixton, Greg, one of the Pact Routes 2 Change team, made contact with him in his first few days. Greg asked Martin how we could support him to care for his family while he was in prison, and what we could do to support him to make a fresh start on release.

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

It was clear that for Martin, maintaining contact with his family, particularly his 5- year-old daughter, was the most important thing for him. He said:

“In prison, to keep contact with your family is like a ship having its anchor. The letters, the telephone calls, they’re the anchor that keeps you sane in prison. They’re what you strive for every week, getting that letter or phone call, it keeps you going. They are the lifeline that keeps you from floating away from all reality.”

During his time in Brixton, his daughter attended Pact Family Days. They could play, hug, get their hands dirty in all of the arts and crafts and fun activities, and enjoy a sense of normality. In between visits, Martin spoke to his daughter on the phone every week.

Martin talked about how much being a father means to him:

“My role as a father is so important for my resettlement. [My daughter] knows who I am. I’ve been in prison all of her life but I’m not going out a complete stranger to her. She knows I’m her daddy, she knows who I am and what I look like, so it’s good. We’ve got that bond. The most important thing I want is to go out and be a proper father to my daughter.”

In the weeks leading up to Martin’s release, Greg from our Routes 2 Change Team worked with agencies outside to ensure Martin was leaving prison with accommodation secured, Probation appointments organised and financial support in place. Martin, having worked at The Clink restaurant in HMP Brixton during his sentence, enrolled onto an intensive English Butler training course where he could put his hospitality skills to good use – though, unfortunately due to the Covid-19 outbreak this had to go on hold.

Today, Martin is enjoying his freedom, and most of all enjoying being a father. He lives in a flat just 10 minutes away from his daughter and was supported to apply for and access Pact’s welfare grant, which meant we were able to provide the financial assistance he needed to buy the essentials to make the flat a home. Greg continues to be in regular contact with Martin to offer practical and emotional support, and ensure Martin stays focused on his route to change. Now in charge of the school run, he sees his daughter every morning and afternoon when he drops her off and picks her up from the school gates and enjoys hearing all about what she’s got up to that day.

He said:

“Being out is fantastic, it’s great! I’m spending lots of time with my daughter. I pick her up from school and she spends a lot of weekends with me. It’s fantastic, it’s more than I could ever have dreamed of. She keeps me on my toes! She’s very active, so I’m always active and having to do lots of things with her. She’s taking all of my energy all of the time and I am loving every minute of it.

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

I’m out in the big wide world now. I’m so happy, it feels wonderful. If it wasn’t for the help I received from all of the organisations including Pact, I don’t think I’d be in the position I am in now. It’s brilliant.”

Fresh Start Centre

In 2020/21 we were also delighted to finish building and furnishing our brand-new Visitors’ Centre just outside the prison gate, which provides a friendly and welcoming environment for prisoners’ families before and after their visits. As well as acting as a traditional family Visitors’ Centre, the new and improved space also offers a learning corner, drop-in sessions and a secret garden for children where they can come and enjoy planting flowers.

With the old Visitors’ Centre building then redundant – and in desperate need of a refurbishment – we were thrilled to have the opportunity to repurpose the building and create our first ever ‘departure lounge’ for prisoners leaving HMP Brixton: a safe space for men to receive essential supplies and support as they decide where to go and what to do next. We were very excited to launch this departure lounge in 2020/21, which was named the ‘Fresh Start Centre’ by the men in the prison.

The Fresh Start Centre is now home to our Family Resettlement Workers, who provide support to men being released from HMP Brixton on the day of release and up to 6 months post release. The Fresh Start Centre provides backpacks for newly released prisoners, including essential supplies for their first days on the outside. There are also two IT stations for the men to complete essential online tasks that will support them in their rehabilitation. The Centre hosts family group conferencing, face-to-face befriending support for the men and their family members, therapeutic play sessions for children and more.

After a successful 2-year pilot, we secured funding to extend our services for another three years at HMP Brixton, and are delighted to be launching Routes 2 Change in HMP/YOI Isis

As we take this next step, launching Routes 2 Change in a different prison environment, with a diverse, younger population, we will be undertaking research, working in consultation with prisoners, families, prison staff and practitioners, to look at what can be learned from the HMP Brixton pilot, and how the model can be adapted to best meet the needs of prisoners at HMP/YOI Isis and their families.

Pact pioneers ground-breaking approach to prison-based support for women with creation of new Social Workers roles

Building on our work with women in prison, we were delighted to secure funding from the Sylvia Adams Trust to launch a pioneering initiative, recruiting our first ever prison-based Social Workers. The two posts, which will be based in HMP Send and HMP Eastwood Park, will provide vital specialist support and advocacy to women in prison whose children are in or are at risk of being in local authority care.

As of Spring 2021, the two new workers had been recruited to these roles and were looking forward to getting started. One of the new workers said:

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

“I want the women to know that even if they are in prison, they deserve a place at the table to discuss their children. I understand how hard it must be for them. They often don’t know the system, or how it works which can prevent them from asking for support. It’s a good opportunity to both support them directly and be their advocate, while also giving them the tools they need to advocate for themselves after release.”

Making custody safer

In 2020/21, building on Lord Farmer’s recommendation for effective communication gateways for prisoners’ families, we began working in partnership with HMPPS on the Safer Custody Innovation project, thanks for their generous grant.

The project sees us working closely with 3 pilot sites – HMP Nottingham, HMP Foston Hall and HMP Eastwood Park – to review and improve their practice around Safer Custody and communicating with families about their concerns. The project will also see the development of Family Induction Booklets, providing information to all families with a loved one in those prisons, with basic information around the regime; what facilities are available such as education, work, gym, and worship; ways to stay in touch; healthcare provision; and what to do if you have a concern about a loved one’s wellbeing. We will also develop a toolkit that can be used by prison Safer Custody teams to improve practice and streamline processes.

Another key strand of this project is the redesign of the Prisoners’ Families Helpline website (www.prisonersfamilies.org). In the second half of 2020, Pact worked closely with HMPPS and in consultation with prisoners’ families, prison family services providers and criminal justice professionals to improve the Helpline website. Following this consultation, Pact launched the brand-new website in February 2021 with refreshed content, presented in a modern, user-friendly, visually appealing way, where information is easily accessible, accurate and up to date. The new website features a contact form where people can submit enquiries directly to the Helpline team, securely and confidentially. It also includes a translate feature, enabling all content to be translated into many languages, as well as downloadable fact sheets.

In March 2021, we launched a new section of the website we call the ‘Safer Custody Portal’, where visitors can find Safer Custody and emergency contact information for all public sector prisons in England and Wales, alongside a short video explaining what families can do if they are worried about a loved one in prison.

Though Covid-19 has restricted some of our efforts to get into prisons and work closely with Safer Custody teams, much progress has been made with this project already. Over the next financial year, the team will be monitoring the effectiveness of the new website and portal, developing more content, and building our partnership with the pilot sites to improve communication with families and help make custody safer.

We would like to thank HMPPS for their funding for this piece of work and are pleased to be working alongside them on this initiative.

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

Volunteering and the ‘Common Good’

We started 2020/21 in the middle of community lockdown, with 561 active volunteers. Despite Covid-19 causing major disruptions to many of the services most supported by our volunteers, we were pleased to end the financial year with 380 active volunteers and a further 149 prospective volunteers moving through our recruitment and training process. Due to the challenges we’ve faced during the past year, our volunteers contributed 11,337 hours of their time to Pact (the equivalent of 1,511 working days) compared to 63,014 hours in the previous year. We continue to be grateful to all our volunteers for their ongoing support and dedication.

During the pandemic we also saw two of our services really thrive: our national Helpline service for prisoners’ families and our national befriending service, providing emotional support over the phone to prisoners’ families struggling to cope with their loved one’s sentence. Both services grew considerably over the year as family members sought more support during this period of uncertainty. Currently both services have 72 active volunteers.

“The befriending service overall has provided an invaluable support to the befriendees who I have been in touch with and they have, without exception, said that they found the service useful. Some of the befriendees we are supporting are feeling extremely isolated and vulnerable so, as well as providing a support service, we are helping them to feel less isolated than they otherwise might.

Please accept my thanks for the quality of the support and the professionalism of the service that you are offering to those of us who are delivering this befriending service.” - Befriending service volunteer

On 30 September 2020 we were delighted to host our annual Volunteer Awards ceremony at an online event, including guest speaker Dr Jo Farrar, Chief Executive of HM Prison & Probation Service. The event was held via Zoom and was attended by 172 people. There were two award winners: a Family Services Volunteer at HMP Onley and a Community Mentor from Cumbria and Lancashire who provides support to prison leavers. Both winners were presented with the ‘Unsung Hero’ award by our award sponsors, The Marsh Christian Trust.

Though it has been a difficult year, 2020/21 has presented us with an opportunity for housekeeping, so we have been able to conduct a thorough audit of our administration practices and reduce the number of applicants being held in the recruitment process. Our National Volunteering Manager (a role funded by The Charles Hayward Foundation) has chaired several volunteer forums for Pact staff to promote and support volunteer engagement, through encouragement of regular communication, social activities, and where possible ongoing volunteering.

The Volunteer Working Group (VWG), chaired by the National Volunteering Manager, has also continued to meet throughout the year and has started to work on Pact’s Volunteer Strategy, which will be developed and implemented in 2021/22. Part of the work the VWG have done this year has been around quality assurance of the volunteer training. In the

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

last year, 291 volunteers completed around 2,500 hours of training through Pact Academy, our new learning management system, which was implemented in June 2020.

We are also pleased to announce we have received grant funding from The Voluntary Solidarity Fund to support our efforts to achieve ‘Investing in Volunteers’ accreditation (the UK quality standard for good practice in volunteer management).

The impact of our volunteering opportunities is best described by the volunteers themselves:

“I have gained so much knowledge about the prison and criminal justice systems, both from practical experience, and from the brilliant training I continue to receive from Pact. I have also got better at thinking on my feet, being empathetic and listening. I would very much recommend volunteering with Pact - it is honestly one of the best things I have done. It's interesting and rewarding, you never stop learning, and the people you meet are fantastic.” – A Family Services volunteer

Journeys to Freedom: high support work placements and coaching for prisoners

In May 2019 Pact launched a brand-new project called Journeys to Freedom . This is a service generously funded by London Housing Foundation (LHF), City Bridge Trust and the Colyer-Fergusson Charitable Trust which was designed to support women prisoners Released on Temporary Licence (RoTL) through the provision of voluntary work placements at Pact, as well as a package of intensive ongoing support for up to six months after their release. The goal is to support the women to improve relationships with their families, increase their confidence to take up education, training, and employment, and to support successful resettlement in London.

In 2020/21, despite the many challenges presented by Covid-19 (including the suspension of RoTL placements), the project supported 14 prisoners leaving HMP East Sutton Park, HMP Send, and HMP Downview. Prior to Covid-19, 7 women took up a voluntary work placement with Pact.

Throughout the year, the 14 women took on a variety of different voluntary roles, from supporting our administrative functions in our Central Office, to supporting prisoners’ families through Pact’s Families’ Casework and Advocacy service and supporting visiting family members in Pact-run Visitors’ Centres.

The work placements were structured and supported, ensuring that the opportunity gave the women the chance to learn new skills and gain experience.

In addition to this, the project supported the women in their resettlement as they rebuilt their lives in London by offering them support from Pact’s Emergency Welfare Fund Grant Scheme. This Scheme enabled them to purchase essential food, clothes and toiletries, as well as household items such as white goods, bedding, and furniture for their accommodation following their release from prison.

The impact of this programme of work is enormous. With employment being one of the most strongly predictive factors in reducing the likelihood of reoffending, being able to offer an opportunity like this, where the women can gain valuable work experience and

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

build their confidence, puts them in far greater stead to make a fresh start.

The Key Worker has adapted to provide support remotely, offering the women the guidance they need. This has been very much appreciated by participants.

One of our RoTL volunteers said:

“Volunteering for Pact did and continues to do so much for my self-esteem. Pact has reminded me that making a mistake isn’t the end of the world but something I can learn from and turn into a positive. Since I started volunteering at Pact, I have felt my self-esteem grow. I walk differently and feel different about myself and this has a lot to do with me volunteering for Pact and the support I receive from them.”

Another of the women, who was supported prior to her release and during her resettlement journey, told us:

“Regular contact with [the Key Worker] has meant so much to me throughout lockdown. We have a one-to-one every Friday which has really helped me build up my self-esteem. I was released from prison a week before lockdown and relocated to London. The support I had on the day of my release helped me to secure accommodation and deal with my anxiety about meeting my Probation officer.”

Influencing commissioning, policy and legislation

Pact is all about providing services that enable people to live better lives. We understand that the most important thing for us to do well is to listen to the people we serve. This is because our services are based on what our service users tell us will make a difference to their lives. We want to achieve outcomes that are meaningful to the people we serve.

Sometimes, however, we recognise that solutions are beyond our control – that what we are hearing from our service users is that there is a need for things to change at a systemic or policy level. When this happens, we look for opportunities and solutions. In some cases, this means providing children, families, or people with convictions with a platform from which their voices can be heard.

Here are a few recent and current examples of Pact advocacy in action:

500 new prison places for women: our perspective

In January 2021, the Ministry of Justice announced that 500 new prison places will be created for women as part of their new initiative to ‘steer women away from crime’. After reading through the details, we published our statement on the announcement which we felt included some positive notes, but also raised concerns from our perspective.

We were encouraged to see as part of these plans, a drive to improve conditions for women in prison, which will enable more women to benefit from better quality family contact, particularly with their children, which as we know is vital. It was also good to see that these plans are designed to support more women to be held in open conditions,

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

which means they can have overnight visits with children, and start organising finance, work, and accommodation, putting them in a much better position to make a fresh start on release.

Our concern, however, is what is not addressed through these plans, specifically the vast amount of evidence suggesting we should be focusing on imprisoning fewer women. This evidence demonstrates high reoffending rates for women who are given custodial sentences in comparison to those who are given community sentences. We know that for many women, who have often committed non-violent crimes and are serving short prison sentences of less than 12 months, the impact on their family relationships, particularly with their children, can be devastating.

As Covid-19 has swept through the prison estate over the past year, the impact on women has been keenly felt. Incidences of self-harm and suicide were already alarmingly high, but a year of spending 23 hours a day being locked in a cell with practically no face-to-face contact with children and loved ones, has seen cases of self-harm and suicide increase at a worrying rate.

In a post-Covid-19 world, we concluded in our statement that it is clear that we need to make better use of alternatives to custody for women who have committed offences and minimise the harmful impact this has on their lives, on children and families, and on society.

Providing prisoners’ families with essential information during Covid-19

2020/21 has been the most challenging time in living memory for prisoners and their families. Prisoners’ families have often expressed that they have felt left in the dark and have been desperate to know two key things - when their loved ones in prison will have access to a Covid-19 vaccine, and when can they visit their loved ones in person. We have worked hard, collaborating with colleagues in the Prison Service to ensure we provide the best information possible for families on these issues, and are a trusted resource with clear, easily accessible guidance.

One of the resources we developed was guidance for prisoners’ families which they could use when having conversations with their loved ones in prison about the vaccine. We created this after research found that nearly 20% of the 805 prisoners consulted said they would decline the vaccine or would be hesitant.

Motivating factors included fears it would conflict with religious beliefs, and a feeling among some people that they did not need a vaccine as they were young and fit. Through our own conversations with prisoners’ families, we learnt that prolonged isolation was making prisoners anxious. Mistrust and rumour were filling the gap of good information and questions were unanswered.

To help fill the void we created the resource which includes commonly asked questions and answers with straightforward facts about the vaccines from trusted resources including the NHS and Public Health England. We also included official guidance from a wide range of religious leaders, including the Catholic Church and British Islamic Medical

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

Association, to help reassure people that being vaccinated does not conflict with religious belief. You can read our resource for families at www.tinyurl.com/prison-vaccine.

Another key resource we created for families came after the announcement from the Prison Service on 29th March 2021 that prisons who achieved Stage 3 status in the National Framework for Prisons would be able to resume social visits. For families this was very welcome and exciting news. However, there were questions about what this announcement meant, and some families were left confused. Following discussions with the Prison Service, Pact created a guide for families explaining the announcement, what it meant, and when and how they could expect visits to restart in their prisons. We were delighted to hear from prisons and families that the guidance was extremely useful and helped people understand what to expect in the coming weeks.

HMP Nottingham shared our guidance on social media, commenting:

“Helpful guide to everyone with (quite rightly) questions about opening visits.”

You can read our explanation of the Stage 3 announcement at www.tinyurl.com/stage-3announcement.

Making the case for the Covid-19 vaccination programme in prisons

Since the fantastic, triumphant news of the development of the Covid-19 vaccines, one of the most debated and discussed subjects in the criminal justice sector has been around the best, most efficient way to roll out the vaccine in the prison estate. The impact that Covid-19 has had on prisoners and their families cannot be underestimated. Although thanks to the efforts of HMPPS and prison staff, deaths in custody due to Covid-19 were much lower than many feared, the toll it has taken on the mental, emotional and physical wellbeing of prisoners and their families has been immense.

We, alongside many others, made the case for the rollout of vaccines to be for whole prison communities – for anybody who lives or works in a prison, including non-uniform staff, chaplains, education workers, healthcare teams, charitable organisations and more. We shared our views on this in an interview with LBC Radio, in statements that we published on our website and social media and in our many, frequent discussions with senior officials and Ministers. We also shared our views in letters to health authorities, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), to Ministers and HMPPS leadership.

We stated our strong belief that there is a clear public health argument for taking the whole prison approach, which had also been suggested by the World Health Organisation, and by many experts in the health and justice sectors.

Taking a whole prison approach to vaccinations would not only stop the transmission of the virus through the prison walls and into the community, it would also be beneficial for victims of crime. The entire criminal justice system has been in lockdown, causing a backlog in court cases, delaying justice for many, and key activities that support people to be rehabilitated and make a fresh start on release have been hugely impacted.

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

In March 2021, after the successful rollout of the vaccine to the top priority groups, the JCVI published its recommendations regarding the next stage of the vaccine programme.

We were disappointed to see that Ministers did not recognise the unique challenges facing prisons, and therefore followed the recommendation to vaccinate prisons in line with the community, using an age-based approach. This was despite media reports that members of the JCVI had acknowledged that an age-based approach is not practical for the prison estate and could lead to wastage.

In March 2021, we published our statement, saying:

“We hope that Ministers will rethink this approach so that a vaccine rollout can continue without delay and bring some much-needed relief to the prisoners who have spent over 8,000 hours in their cells, to their families who have waited so long for visits, and to the hidden heroes – the prison officers and non-uniform staff who have been under enormous pressure.”

In this statement, our Chair of Trustees, Phil Taylor OBE said:

“It has been devastating to see the impact of the pandemic on prisoners’ mental health, their families and all of the staff over the past year, and how, despite all of the efforts to stop the spread, sadly, many have been afflicted by this terrible virus. The vaccine has provided a ray of hope in what has been a very dark year and represents a real way out for the Prison Service. An efficient, effective vaccination rollout would give us hope of a return to a normal regime, where prisoners can maintain contact with their families and have access to education, exercise, communal worship and rehabilitative programmes, and staff can be alleviated of the immense pressure this has caused.

People who live and work in prisons understand the challenges that the environment brings, but can also recognise the opportunity it provides to quickly and effectively roll out the vaccine, given the authorisation to do so.”

Voices for change: making prisoners’ families voices heard

We believe the most powerful and effective way of bringing about change is through the stories, voices and experiences of the real people who are being affected. We believe that in order for change to happen, prisoners’ families need to have their voices heard by Ministers, officials, governors, prison staff, the wider sector and the general public. We know that as professionals we can collate and present evidence, including hard data, to some effect. However, without the real voices of people with experience, our impact would be limited. Therefore, we capitalised on opportunities throughout the year to influence operational practice and culture by giving prisoners’ families a platform to be heard.

Building on the success of our Prisoners’ Families’ Voices project, we developed a new Voices for Change programme which brought together a team of six ‘Ambassadors’ - people with direct experience of having a close relative sent to prison. Throughout the year we provided our Ambassadors with expert training and support to empower them to ‘speak their truth to power’.

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

In 2020/21, we continued to build on this area of work albeit from a social distance. Some of our highlights include:

at www.prisonadvice.org.uk/news/some-things-we-cant-think .

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

In March 2021 we were very sad to learn of the passing of our Ambassador Martin Freeth. Martin had continued to be a valued, highly active member of our Ambassador group following the passing of his wife Averil Freeth, who had also been an Ambassador, in 2019.

Martin passed away at the age of 76 after a year-long battle with cancer. He was an extraordinary man, having spent a career in film production working for the BBC, producing many BBC Horizon programmes and working as a producer for Tomorrow’s World. Martin donated a huge amount of his time to creating a number of documentarystyle films for us, which told the stories of prisoners and their families. We count ourselves extremely lucky to have benefitted from his expertise and insights as a Pact Ambassador and we are eternally grateful for everything he did for us. We will miss him dearly.

You can read Martin’s obituary in The Guardian at www.tinyurl.com/martin-freeth.

Chief Executive of HM Prison and Probation Service hears from our Ambassadors

On 30 September 2020, we held our AGM and Conference as an online event for the very first time. Though we were sadly not able to welcome our guests in person as we normally do each year, we were keen to still host an event that was impactful and interesting, as always, led by the voices and experiences of the people we serve – prisoners and their families.

At the Conference, which was titled Working together for the ‘Common Good’ in a postCovid criminal justice landscape , we were pleased to welcome Dr Jo Farrar, Chief Executive of HM Prison & Probation Service as our guest speaker. We were also delighted to have Francis Toye, CEO and Founder of The Unilink Group as a speaker, who provided an insight into the increasing role of technology in the criminal justice landscape.

Attendees had the chance to hear from a panel of speakers, made up of prisoners’ family members, who had been directly impacted by the Covid-19 prison lockdown. They heard about how this affected their lives and their relationships, the vital support that enabled them to maintain contact, and what lessons they feel the criminal justice system can learn from this unprecedented period.

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

Guests also heard from Pact volunteers about what inspires them to dedicate their time to supporting those caught up in the justice system, and how their roles have adapted to meet the needs of service users during lockdown.

We were pleased that during the Q&A panel Dr Farrar was able to answer some key questions from our panel of prisoners’ family members as well as members of the public with a loved one in prison. Some of the questions included:

“In July this year my mentally ill (paranoid schizophrenic) father was finally released from Prison into a mental health institution. It is no exaggeration to say that he arrived at the institution in a condition which can only be described as being close to death. This bold statement is backed up by the forensic social worker who has formally raised her concerns with the prison.

Can you explain to me how I am to have any faith in your prison healthcare and safer custody teams when even with my countless safeguarding alerts, requests to engage with the prison healthcare team and pleas for help; they are all falling on deaf ears and being brushed to one side?

Should it really be the role of organisations like Pact to have to help get my concerns heard within the prison walls; highlight my father's immediate need for mental health support, the prison’s duty of care to him and raise my concerns about gaps in your safeguarding practices?”

Another read:

“What is happening about progression and behaviour courses? My partner is years over tariff and has been waiting a very long time to transfer to open conditions. He has done everything asked of him, yet still nothing! He is stuck in a box, wanting to progress, but not being allowed to! Every day is a day added to his sentence through no fault of his own! Where is plan B? Is this the new normal - no rehabilitation, just tick boxes and punishment with no accountability or timescales?”

One question from a prison leaver read:

“I was released before Covid-19 and so in some ways I count myself lucky. But why do prisons release people on Fridays – knowing full well that this leaves us in limbo because so many of the services and agencies we need to see to get things sorted are closed over the weekends – usually from Friday lunchtime if truth be told? Lots of people end up on the streets and if it wasn’t for my Pact worker who fought for me, I’d have done something stupid.”

You can find out more and watch the recording of the event in full at www.prisonadvice.org.uk/event/agm-2020 .

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

Confident, inspired funders

Data security certification

ISO 27001 is the national quality standard for information security management, formally known as ISO/IEC 27001:2005. In February 2021, Pact Group passed its annual surveillance visit without any non-compliances or recommendations for improvement, despite moving all its Central Office functions and service delivery to remote home-based working.

The Pact Group integrated business management system incorporates our information security management system (ISMS) and our requirements to ensure we are GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) compliant. An ISMS is a framework of policies and procedures that includes all legal, physical and technical controls involved in an organisation’s information risk management processes.

ISO 27001 was developed to provide a model for establishing, implementing, operating, monitoring, reviewing, maintaining and improving an ISMS. It requires a robust set of assessments and audit processes across all our departments to ensure that key risks are identified and mitigated and that checks are in place in support of management action.

These long-term systems were augmented by a series of temporary and semi-temporary adjustments encapsulated within management instructions, policies and procedures to enable a quick move to homeworking and to then establish more robust systems as it became apparent arrangements would become longer term.

An engaged, passionate and well-supported workforce

Covid-19 pandemic

During 2020/21 several of our Pact People caught the Covid-19 virus but thankfully, all have recovered. As part of our response to Covid-19 we put in place special sick leave to ensure all staff remained away from work when they or a member of their household displayed symptoms by paying full sick pay regardless of their entitlement and by ensuring that the time away had no bearing on any absence management procedures.

Sadly, a few of our people have been bereaved as a result of the virus and we offered support through additional time off and access to our counselling service provided by Care First.

Via HMPPS we were offered access to Cruse Bereavement online training for around 18 staff to support service users. We will ensure that there are wider benefits from this training for managers and the HR team to also support our people.

Health and safety

At the start of the pandemic, we responded rapidly to the changing situation, putting in place measures to support homeworking, including a temporary homeworking policy and support for additional health and safety equipment as required for each individual. We risk

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

assessed every site and every service to ensure appropriate Covid-safe practices were adopted, putting place additional safety equipment, and child-friendly William the Bear signage in our Visitors’ Centres.

We also developed a comprehensive personal risk assessment tool and guidance to assess all our people to understand who had underlying health conditions, who lived with people who were vulnerable and who had caring responsibilities. This enabled us to respond very quickly to enable staff to shield and to support the return of our people as services remobilised back into prisons and the community. Training was made available for all staff on Covid-19 and the safe use of Personal Protective Equipment and the psychological impact of Covid-19. We have encouraged all Pact People to take advantage of opportunities for testing and to receive the vaccine as it becomes available to them.

Furlough

During the year it has been necessary to implement the Government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and put some workers on furlough where their roles have been funded by revenue from our catering services in prisons. Unfortunately, it has been necessary in some of our services to restructure the staffing which has resulted in 14 redundancies.

Supporting our people and connecting Pact People together

One of the initial priorities has been to put in place additional welfare measures to support staff and volunteers in the different situations they face. At a corporate level we have revamped our wellbeing area on our intranet, PIXIE, making access to it more prominent on the homepage. We updated webinar information and articles from our employee assistance programme. Our Wellbeing Champion, who is a trained counsellor, ran wellbeing sessions twice a week via Zoom.

At a local level our people embraced remote technology (Zoom/Microsoft Teams) and used it regularly to maintain contact for team meetings, coffee catch ups, locally arranged social events and quizzes.

Awareness of the need to find ways to connect people together while working remotely from home led to the creation of a temporary Social Committee to organise activities to bring people together. Following its success with regular quizzes throughout the year, and the popular Christmas and Easter activities including a virtual quiz via Teams involving over 60 people from across Pact, and a Christmas card design competition for children, the Social Committee has now become a permanent feature of Pact life.

Improving internal communication

Pact News, our internal e-newsletter for staff and volunteers, continues to evolve, providing important news and insights into the work of individuals and services across Pact. It is now delivered monthly in a consistent but more importantly, accessible, way. Feedback from staff and volunteers has been very positive.

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

Training and development

We implemented a new learning management system, Pact Academy, in June 2020 which hosts Pact training courses as well as giving our people access to courses in leadership and management; health, safety and wellbeing; catering and IT skills and so on. Since initial roll out 461 Pact People have completed an astonishing 5,767 courses during the first 10-month period. We are delighted at the levels of participation and engagement with this new way of delivering training and development. Going forward we will be looking at developing a blended approach to learning making the most of Pact Academy but retaining important face-to-face delivery that encourages sharing of practice and building important connections across the organisation.

Investment in HR infrastructure

We also implemented a new HR and payroll system to streamline our employment processes and to improve the provision of information to our employees, line managers and between line managers, HR and payroll.

Fundraising

We are extremely grateful to the many trusts, foundations, statutory organisations, parishes, companies and individuals who have been so generous in their support of Pact’s work over the past year. We thank them for the many ways in which they have shown their commitment to us and for their encouragement and their shared understanding of the importance of this work.

As the scale and impact of the pandemic became clear, we were particularly appreciative of the rapid and generous response of our donors to our situation which has enabled us to continue to offer support through the crisis. Each gift, however great or small, whether of time or money, helps us to make a difference.

New restricted grant income generated during 2020/21 totalled £2,660,000, up again on the previous year, providing much-needed support for Pact’s core services and new project work. This included grants supporting a wide variety of activities supporting prisoners and their families, from implementing a new befriending service for families in Wales, to increasing our provision of welfare grants to support the resettlement of former prisoners during the pandemic.

Support from individual donors, parishes and Catholic dioceses remained strong over the course of the year. Donations including Gift Aid totalled £146,000. We remain enormously thankful for the kind and faithful support that is given to us. We also received £470,000 in unrestricted grants from charitable trusts and foundations and £72,000 from companies.

Operation Elf: Bringing a little bit of magic to prisoners’ children at Christmas

More than six hundred prisoners’ children experienced the magic of Christmas last year thanks to the generosity of our supporters who donated £10 book tokens as part of our Operation Elf campaign. Children of all ages across England and Wales opened a

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

Christmas card from their parent in prison to find a £10 book token to spend on a story of their own. One mother who received a book token to send to her son told us:

“I am so grateful. My son loves reading. He is going to buy the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid book which is out in January.”

We remain immensely grateful to all those who supported Operation Elf and helped us to bring joy to children affected by imprisonment during the pandemic.

Our Prisoners’ Sunday appeal in October brought in donations of almost £40,000 principally from parish collections.

We received no fundraising complaints during the year.

We would like to acknowledge all the charitable trusts that have supported our work over the course of the year. Their contribution to our work is tremendous and hugely valued.

29th May 1961 Charitable Trust Albert Gubay Charitable Foundation Austin and Hope Pilkington Trust Avon & Somerset Police Community Trust Barrow Cadbury Trust BBC Children In Need Berkshire Nurses and Relief in Sickness Trust Bromley Trust Casa Stella Trust - Chadwyck Healey Charitable Trust Charles Hayward Foundation Charles Plater Trust Charlotte Marshall Charitable Trust CHK Foundation City Bridge Trust Colyer-Fergusson Charitable Trust Comic Relief Community Foundation for Surrey David Isaacs Fund Dick & Charles Williams Charitable Trust Drapers' Charitable Fund Edith Bessie Gibson Trust Eleanor Rathbone Charitable Trust Esmée Fairbairn Foundation Fishmongers' Company Charitable Trust Forest Hill Charitable Trust Garfield Weston Foundation Glasspool Charity Trust Gwendoline & Margaret Davies Charity

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

Hadley Trust Hanley Trust Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation Hedley Foundation Inner London Magistrates Court's Poor Box Charity Jeanne Marie Gunn Trust Jerusalem Trust Jill Franklin Trust John Lyon's Charity Llywodraeth Cymru London Funders Consortium London Housing Foundation Marsh Christian Trust Maurice And Hilda Laing Charitable Trust Michael & Shirley Hunt Charitable Trust Moondance Foundation MOPAC National Lottery Community Fund Oakdale Trust Odin Charitable Trust Our Lady of Fatima Trust Pilgrim Trust Porticus UK Rhododendron Trust Sheriffs' & Recorder's Fund Simpson Foundation Sir Harold Hood's Charitable Trust Sir James Roll Charitable Trust Sir Pierce Lacy Charitable Trust Smallwood Trust Swire Charitable Trust Sylvia Adams Charitable Trust Thomas Sivewright Catto Charitable Settlement Tudor Trust Van Neste Foundation Vera Outhwaite Charitable Trust Violet and Milo Cripps Charitable Trust Voluntary Solidarity Fund International Wales Council for Voluntary Action White Oak Charitable Trust Woodhaven Trust Zochonis Charitable Trust

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

Financial review

Income for the year totalled £8,577,000, an increase of 4% on the previous year. Key sources of funding during the year included grants from charitable foundations and contracts with prisons and Community Rehabilitation Companies to provide services to prisoners, people with convictions and their families. Expenditure totalled £6,453,000, a fall of 12% on the previous year due to the closure of the Visitors’ Centre cafés throughout the year. The apparent mismatch between income and costs, with income rising and costs falling, is because we were awarded significant restricted grant funding for multi-year projects during the year, where the associated costs are specifically earmarked to be incurred in future years.

Reserves and reserves policy

The Trustees recognise Pact needs to hold a certain level of free reserves. This is to cover areas it is difficult to find funding for, such as innovative research and service user participation, as well as to mitigate against the risk of lower income or higher costs than expected. The main risks arise from the need to cover unfunded exit costs on projects and services coming to an end, failure to achieve expected income targets from fundraising, failure to achieve expected results on payment-by-results contracts, unexpected delays to new projects and services, unexpected reductions in value of existing projects and services, and potential legal fees and bad debts.

The Trustees have reviewed the level of reserves required to cover these eventualities. In line with good practice, the Trustees have opted to link the target level of free reserves directly to a detailed analysis of the risks, the likely impact of those risks, and the probability of them occurring. This translates to an optimum free reserves level between £946,000 and £1,090,000. The actual free reserves level at 31 March 2021 was £932,000. The Trustees recognise the gap of £14,000 and are taking active steps to close this gap during 2021/22 by controlling costs, setting a surplus budget, and pursuing continued growth. They will keep the optimum free reserves level under review as Pact’s activity and risk levels change and will adjust targets for closing the gap accordingly.

The use of the going concern basis of accounting is appropriate because there are no material uncertainties related to events or conditions that may cast significant doubt about the ability of Pact to continue as a going concern.

The Board regularly reviews Pact’s work to ensure that maximum benefit is gained from the limited resources at our disposal and the effort of both staff and voluntary supporters.

Investment policy

Under Pact’s articles of association, the Board have the power to invest in such assets as they see fit. The objective as outlined in Pact’s investment policy is to produce the best financial return from Pact’s investments at an acceptable level of risk. For short-term reserves, the aim remains to preserve the capital value with a minimum level of risk, with assets being readily available to meet unanticipated cash-flow requirements at short notice. This will be balanced by gradual investment in longer-term reserves as and when

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

funds become available. The long-term aim is to generate an above-inflation return while generating an income to support Pact’s ongoing activities.

Pact invests as far as possible in line with its charitable aims, endeavouring to balance maximising income for our work with our wider social responsibilities as a charity operating in accordance with Catholic social teaching. Our preference is for investments which help maintain well-being for the economic, social and natural environments as expressed in the appeal by Pope Francis, Laudato Sì (On Care for our Common Home) . We are also guided by the principle of solidarity with those who are poor and marginalised and seek social justice.

Key risks

Our focus for the majority of 2020/21 has been on managing the impact of the global pandemic. In particular:

Further, as the year has progressed, we have continued to focus on the key risks of:

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

Despite the pandemic, Pact Group has managed to keep all services operational and has, through grant and contract renegotiation, securing of emergency funds and new business, finished the year in a strong financial position and with services performing well against targets and offering revised delivery models to continue to best support our service users.

Risk register

The Trustees and Senior Leadership Team (SLT) continued to work together to maintain and review a corporate risk register which identifies the principal and significant risks facing us.

As with previous years, risks were grouped against our strategic objectives with each SLT member responsible for the oversight of the risks in their area. All risks are reviewed by the SLT with key organisational risks shared with the Board.

Furthermore, in light of the pandemic, we moved a number of the prevalent financial, health and safety and staff safety risks to issues, monitoring their short-, medium- and longer-term impact. We are delighted that by the February 2021 Board meeting we were able to close the issues log and return to monitoring our risks as near to normal as possible.

Our risk register is a living document which is part of our strategic planning pack and is reviewed twice a year and updated by the Deputy CEO and reviewed by our SLT and Board. Our risk register also forms a central part of our ISO 27001 compliance and audit and is subject to external scrutiny.

Risks are assessed by probability and impact, and we put strategies in place to minimise the likelihood of their occurrence where possible and to mitigate their impact should they occur.

We are committed to being a learning organisation, and so the Board and SLT regularly review what can be learned from the challenges we face and how we can make things work better in the future. Lessons learned are fed into our process of reviewing our policies and procedures, training, management, and recruitment practices.

Performance

With the global pandemic impacting the full financial year and Pact Group operating under a series of Exceptional Delivery Models, reviewing and monitoring performance has been very different from previous years.

The first few months were spent on moving all services to working at home and setting up remote systems of work to be able to offer as broad a range of services as we could to our services users, while complying with the strict terms of the lockdown.

From June 2020 onwards our focus was on how services might safely return to face-to-face delivery in line with Exceptional Delivery Models and the development of safe systems of

45

Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

work. As part of this we agreed with our commissioners and prime contractors what a staged return of services might look like and what the thresholds might be for services to return.

After a significant period of risk assessing and confirming safe systems of work for all services, we were able to move to a stage of better performance management against delivery.

While the year has undoubtedly been incredibly difficult in terms of managing delivery, all of our services remained operational and accessible to our service users. Out of adversity, we have managed not only to support a significant number of service users but, in many cases, have been able to exceed performance targets through creative working.

The performance achieved throughout the year has been a tribute to the inventiveness, dedication and tenacity of our staff and volunteers and the close working relationships with our commissioners and partners across prisons and Probation.

Through reviewing feedback from service users and commissioners, and the quantitative and qualitative data available, we can determine that the performance of our services has been to a high standard and that our work is highly valued.

During the year we moved into our fourth and supposedly final year of the Family Services contracts; however, with considerable disruption to services and renegotiations of service offers required, we are extremely grateful to the procurement and HMPPS Families team for the support both putting in place relief funding and extending contracts for a further 12 months, recognising the difficulties imposed during the pandemic.

Delivery of our Transforming Rehabilitation contracts has continued throughout the year with services moved to almost entirely remote delivery. Despite the difficulties faced, the teams have been able to achieve astonishing outcomes with exceptional feedback from our commissioners. This is the final full year for these contracts and as of the start of the new financial year we are working with prime contractors to implement our exit strategies for these services while mobilising for the new era of Probation contracts.

Further, our CFO programme delivery has continued to innovate and integrate new programmes of support and further enhance the quality of our delivery despite working from home for most of the year. Since being back onsite from August/September 2020, our staff team have worked hard to achieve the outcomes required within our recovery plan.

Despite the pandemic our national Director of Services and Assistant Director of Services have continued to work hard implementing a greater focus on quality and practitioner development. Further, we have been able to appoint to the newly created role of Data and Information Manager to assist us with greater interrogation of our performance data and impact.

Performance of every contract and grant-funded project is closely monitored against targets and deliverables, and variances investigated. Performance management processes have been reviewed and updated with greater localised control for the process with our Heads of Services, newly appointed Deputy Heads of Service and Service

46

Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

Managers. Quarterly performance meetings with the Senior Leadership Team ensure key risks and opportunities are communicated and explored alongside more immediate escalation routes.

Safety and staff care

Our staff work inside prisons, in prison Visitors’ Centres (usually sited just outside prisons), in courts, in the community, and in office settings.

For much of the year these settings have been closed so we have had to adapt to new ways of working and supporting our staff in working from home. This has meant a different set of challenges on how to ensure staff are supported when everyone is working from home.

In response to the pandemic, we have undertaken personal and family risk assessments to ensure we understand specific circumstances for our staff we well as site risk assessments to ensure every location our staff and volunteers are working in is Covid-safe. We have worked to shape prison Exceptional Delivery Models (EDMs) and adapted our services to be able to continue to provide support for our services users while protecting our staff. We have consulted with our partners within CRCs to adjust our services to confirm with the Probation EDMs and safe systems of work.

While we have not run our usual annual Health and Safety audit, we have undertaken a Covid-19-specfic review of how we have developed our services and how we have sought to protect our staff to help inform future decisions around how we gradually unlock services.

We have also continued to use this year to implement our new Pact Academy, and to support our staff and volunteers to undertake mandatory and refresher training and to take the opportunity for skills development. We are delighted that over 5,700 courses have been taken up by our staff since we launched Pact Academy 12 months ago.

In 2020/21 we have continued to develop our internal safeguarding processes and procedures. We took immediate action to protect 121 adults and children from serious harm and provided feedback and support for each of these cases. This is a significant increase from the 71 safeguarding incidents in 2019/20 despite our working remotely for much of the year.

It is key to note that suicidal intent and self-harm accounted for 11% (8 out of 71) of referrals last year, and this year account for 25% (31 out of 121), more than double the previous year. Serious mental health concerns – incidents where we are concerned enough about a person’s wellbeing or mental stage to instigate a referral to a professional organisation such as Community Mental Health Teams or the person’s GP – rose from 4% in 2019/20 (3 out of 71) to 17% (21 out of 121) this year.

During the past year 201 people have completed our online safeguarding course: 49 staff members and 152 volunteers. We continued to support and maintain our structure of Designated Safeguarding Officers (17 staff members trained and operational) and to

47

Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

complete the actions on our annual safeguarding development plan to ensure continuous improvement of safeguarding services.

Risks relating to financial sustainability

A key strategic risk continues to be our level of funds. As noted on page 43, our level of free reserves is marginally below target. We are carefully managing this and expect the situation to improve given the success of our growth strategy and our continuing focus on cost control and income generation. We continued to grow year on year, with 4% income growth during the year following 13% income growth last year. These results are in line with our broad strategy.

Our reserves policy considers the commercial risks we need to manage as a charity and our target level of free reserves adjusts according to changing risks and our growth in income and costs. We continue to tightly control our expenditure, actively work with the Ministry of Justice to keep overdue debts to a minimum, set fully costed and realistic budgets, and focus on generating income from a wide range of sources including traditional donations and core grants as well as new contracts for services.

A note of thanks

The Covid-19 pandemic brought abrupt and far-reaching changes to the operation of prisons and to the way in which Pact was able to support prisoners and their families. The trustees wish to record their thanks for the courage and flexibility demonstrated by volunteers, staff, senior leaders and our CEO, Andy Keen-Downs, in responding to the challenges. It would have been easy to give up and shut down, but at all levels Pact staff and volunteers have shown energy and imagination in adapting services and roles to the new environment and working to ensure that prisoners and families were not left unsupported. We are grateful too to our funders for their generosity and commitment during a very difficult year.

Looking to the future

Corporate Development Plan 2021-2023

We have maintained a corporate risk register, listened to our service users, volunteers and staff, and have set ourselves a Corporate Development Plan for 2021 - 2023. Over the next two years we will invest in our capacity to provide the necessary resources and support to our frontline workers to ensure their time and talents are spent on doing what they do best: supporting people to live better lives.

We will also lay down the foundations for the next period of growth and development.

We are designating £416,000 as a development fund to enable us to invest in our own development over the next two years. This will allow us to provide more and better services and to serve the people we support more effectively. Our areas of investment will include:

48

Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

Funding and longer-term growth and development

We have assessed the specific financial risks to Pact over the coming years, and the opportunities for further growth and development. Public funding may be affected by austerity measures. Charitable trusts and foundations who depend on the performance of their investments may be limited in their potential to give. Individual donors could also see their investments and incomes suffer. The potential for corporate sponsorship and philanthropy may well be more limited. Competition for funds will become more intense. Many church communities on whom we depend are also struggling due to reduced donations from restricted church attendance.

We are also very mindful that the work that we and just a handful of other charities have pioneered over so many years, with charitable funds, to support relationships and family life in the justice system, is now becoming much more mainstream and therefore competitive. This is a sign of our influence and success in proving the worth and impact of approaches that were once considered marginal. These are early indications, and much has yet to be achieved to reform the justice system, and we will naturally continue to challenge the Government regarding its record. But contracting opportunities are

49

Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

growing for other voluntary and even private sector organisations to bid for funding to do work that was perhaps once only of interest to Pact and a handful of other charities. This is good news for prisoners, families, and the justice system. But it also means that we cannot rest on our laurels. Pact will continue to do what we do best, but we will also be expanding our horizons, based on the evidence of need, and our increased consultation with people with lived experience of the justice system. Over our long history, Pact has had its own Probation officers, hostels, doctors and job-schemes. We have always been ready to respond to need.

Where next for Pact? Exploring new horizons…

Over the next three years, as we continue to deliver our Routes to Change strategy, and deliver our corporate development plan, we will also be consulting service users, studying the research, speaking with experts and other agencies, and exploring the potential for developing new services to meet gaps in provision in several priority areas of concern:

Mental health support

Having responded to the recent consultation on reform of the Mental Health legislation, we will be exploring how Pact can make even more of a difference to people in custody and their families who are suffering from mental illness. We are particularly interested in the potential to provide advocacy and support to those people whose mental illness is the cause of offending, as well as those who develop mental illness whilst in custody, to ensure they have access to appropriate mental health care.

Young people at risk

For many children and young people, crime at an early age results in an escalating journey of incarceration, and reoffending. We see far too many young people ‘graduate’ from secure settings for under-18s to Young Offender Institutions and then to adult prisons, with devastating impact on their life chances. The loss of life of so many children and young people on the streets of our towns and cities is horrific, and whilst there are several agencies involved in tackling these issues, it is clear that we are a long way from a lasting solution. We are concerned at the growing incidence of children and young people being exploited and groomed into criminal activity by adult criminal groups, leading to alienation from families, violence, and knife crime. We are keen to explore how we might contribute to work to address these issues and the criminalisation of children.

Prisoners’ families’ legal rights

Having a family member in prison can be a terrible ordeal, especially if you believe you or your loved one has suffered an injustice, and you want to challenge the power of the state. Access to legal aid is non-existent for prisoners’ families, and most lack the money to hire a legal professional. Even in cases where there has been a death in custody, access to professional advice or counsel is extremely limited. We are therefore beginning to explore the potential for developing an arms-length pro-bono legal advice and advocacy service for prisoners’ families in partnership with commercial law firms and academia.

Beyond Probation

We welcome the Government’s decision to terminate the ‘Transforming Rehabilitation’ experiment, even though we delivered excellent, life-changing services via both the

50

Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

National Probation Service and Community Rehabilitation Companies under this model. We welcome the news that the National Probation Service will now have responsibility for all Probation services, and we look forward to developing and delivering solutions to meet the needs of prison leavers. However, we also recognise that the funding for Probation and resettlement services remains inadequate for some people who feel trapped in the revolving doors of prison, homelessness, and chaotic lifestyles. We have a long and proud history of going above and beyond what the State is prepared to support. We will therefore continue to explore the gaps in provision and consider what we could do to achieve maximum impact, to provide longer term, more holistic support to enable people to live good lives, build healthy relationships, a sense of community/belonging, and avoid reoffending.

Sharing our expertise

We will also continue to explore how we can best share our expertise and know-how. We will continue our police training programme, and where resources permit, offer training to our partners in HMPPS to support them in developing their practice. Our new in-house e- learning platform, Pact Academy, will enable us to significantly increase our training to volunteers, to enable them to work confidently alongside Pact staff in delivering our important work. And we will explore what more we could do to improve outcomes for the people we serve through supporting other agencies to improve their practice.

Structure, governance and management

Pact is a charitable company limited by guarantee and governed by its memorandum and articles of association as amended by special resolutions dated 18 April 2000 and 18 July 2012. Pact started operating in 1898 as the Catholic Prisoners’ Aid Society and was incorporated on 1 September 1939.

The Board is Pact’s governing body and is responsible for establishing Pact’s policies in relation to the furtherance of its charitable objectives. There are between 6 and 15 Trustees on the Board and new Trustees are appointed by existing Trustees from time to time, based on a process of regular review of the capabilities and expertise of the Board, and the evolving needs of the charity. Prospective Trustees are interviewed and invited to submit an application, and if this is approved at a Trustee meeting, they are initially invited to attend a Board meeting on a co-opted basis. An induction pack is provided which together with meeting the CEO, visits to projects and Central Office, and background reading, form a comprehensive introduction to the charity.

The Board has a clear governance role, approving the strategy and annual budgets. Trustees ensure risk is well understood and managed, and that the charity is operating legally, that we are maximising our income, and operating in full compliance with our charitable objectives, ethos and values. The Board appoints and delegates the delivery of the strategy and management of the operation of the charity to the CEO, who in turn appoints and manages the Senior Leadership Team, advises the Board, and provides direction and leadership for the staff and volunteers. The Board and CEO work in a spirit of partnership to develop strategy, review performance, and ensure that we maximise our impact for our beneficiaries, drawing on consultation with our service users, volunteers, staff and key stakeholders.

51

Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

A sub-committee of the Board, the Remuneration Committee, is responsible for setting the CEO’s pay. The remuneration committee takes into account the responsibilities of the role and the need to set a competitive salary compared to organisations of a similar size and scope to Pact, balanced against what is affordable for Pact. The CEO is, in turn, responsible for setting the pay of other Senior Leadership Team members (Deputy Chief Executive, Director of Services, Assistant Director of Services, Director of Human Resources and Workforce Development, and Group Finance Director). This involves maintaining a job evaluation system to account for the responsibilities of each role and periodically carrying out external benchmarking against similar roles, using an external consultant to assist with this process where required.

A further sub-committee of the Board, the Finance Committee, scrutinises Pact’s financial affairs including annual budgets and reforecasts, management accounts, tax matters, investment decisions, and financial and accounting policies. The committee also liaises with the auditor and reviews the performance of Pact’s external investment advisers.

Trustees have adopted the practice of monitoring and recording individual Trustee attendance at general meetings. The attendance register is available on request.

Quality assurance

We have continued to review our policies and procedures in line with the due diligence and compliance requirements of larger scale public sector contracts and the increasing levels of risk within the settings in which we work to ensure that our quality assurance framework remains fit for purpose. Our quality and policy group reviews, drafts and oversees the implementation of policies and procedures. We were pleased to maintain our ISO 27001 quality standard accreditation and achieve Cyber Essentials certification.

During the year, the Board and senior staff reviewed the following policies and procedures, which were added by the team or updated to ensure that they remained fit for purpose: acceptable use of IT; data protection; environmental and sustainability; health and safety; information security management system; intellectual property; quality; research and evaluation; reserves; safeguarding; and vetting for those visiting prisons occasionally.

Towards the end of the year, we established a more strategic approach to progressing the Inclusion, Diversity and Equality Action agenda through the creation of the ‘IDEA’ Group. With oversight and sponsorship by the Board, CEO and Director of Human Resources and Workforce Development, the group comprises staff and volunteers with a broad range of lived experience and perspectives. This group is currently reviewing our policy and developing a strategic workplan for the whole of Pact Group.

Pact Futures CIC

Our wholly owned subsidiary, Pact Futures CIC (Community Interest Company), has remained stable this year, reaching income of £1,348,000, and employed an average of 35 staff throughout the year, equivalent to 31 full-time posts.

This year has seen Pact Futures mobilising a series of Prison Education contracts working in HMP Elmley, HMP Brinsford, HMP Manchester and HMP Bullingdon as well as a pan-London

52

Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

contract covering all 8 London prisons (HMP High Down, Wormwood Scrubs, Wandsworth, Pentonville, Brixton, HMP/YOI Isis, HMP/YOI Feltham and HMP Thameside). Despite the pandemic, we have managed to maintain services in most prisons remotely or more recently with staff working within the prison again.

Within the year we have also secured new work supporting family and relationship provision in the new CFO Activity Hubs working with Shaw Trust in the West Midlands, East Midlands and East of England, Ingeus in the Northeast, and Reed in London. Whilst these contracts do not go live until in 2021/22, a huge amount of work has been undertaken to mobilise the contracts and ensure we are able to deliver effective outcomes for this community-based work.

Further, we are delighted to have secured substantial ‘Family’ work under the new Probation Personal Wellbeing contracts working in partnership with Ingeus as our prime contractor, alongside CGL who are providing support for ‘Lifestyles and Associates’. This sees Pact Futures CIC employing 17 full-time equivalent Personal Wellbeing

Managers/Advisors working across Northumbria, Humberside, West Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Staffordshire, and West Midlands. We have another two staff members providing support via a contract with Nacro in Northamptonshire. In addition, through a series of contracts with Maximus, we will be providing mentoring and peer support alongside their employability contracts in Wales, West Midlands, London and North West.

We have continued to deliver our Transforming Rehabilitation contracts as in previous years. All of these have run remotely throughout 2021/22 and, despite the restrictions, have continued to provide invaluable support to our service users. Contracts delivered include:

During the year we have seen the end of the grant funding in Hampshire and Isle of Wight and the closure of the HMP Wandsworth pilots.

This year has seen stability within the Board with Adrian Masters remaining as Director and Chair of Pact Futures and supported by fellow Directors Christine Chang (Big Society Capital), Jim Horsted (previously Working Transitions), Carolyn Robertson (previously Barclays), Nick Smart (Pact Board nominee), Ellen Green (Pact Group Deputy CEO and Managing Director of Pact Futures CIC), and Andrew Keen-Downs (Pact Group CEO).

Partnerships and alliances

Pact continues to work with a range of strategic partnerships and alliances. Some of the notable examples within the year are:

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Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

Statement of Trustees’ responsibilities

The Trustees, who are also the Directors of Pact for the purposes of company law, are responsible for preparing the Trustees’ report and accounts in accordance with applicable law and United Kingdom accounting standards (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).

Company law requires the Trustees to prepare accounts for each financial year which give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of Pact and of the incoming resources and application of resources, including the income and expenditure, of Pact for that period.

In preparing those accounts, the Trustees are required to:

54

Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Trustees’ report for the year ended 31 March 2021

The Trustees are responsible for keeping proper accounting records which disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the financial position of Pact and which enable them to ensure that the accounts comply with the Companies Act 2006. They are also responsible for safeguarding the assets of Pact and hence for taking reasonable steps for the prevention and detection of fraud and other irregularities. Insofar as the Trustees are aware:

The Trustees are responsible for the maintenance and integrity of the corporate and financial information included on Pact’s website. Legislation in the United Kingdom governing the preparation and dissemination of financial statements may differ from legislations in other jurisdictions.

Approved by the board of trustees on 24 September 2021 and signed on its behalf by

Phil Taylor OBE Andrew Keen-Downs Chair Company Secretary

In Memoriam

Our work is dependent on the support and goodwill of HMPPS leadership and staff, and we want to take this opportunity to express our sincere condolences to the families, friends, and colleagues of all of those who lost their lives in 2020-21.

We also extend our heartfelt condolences to the family friends and colleagues of two of our staff who worked for Pact at HMP Pentonville, both of whom who have sadly passed away. Carol Hayward and Saba Tari were both much loved by the children and families who visited loved ones in HMP Pentonville, and by their co-workers. They both worked in the Visitors’ Centre, and inside the prison visits hall, providing support to the children and running the Pact café. They will be greatly missed.

May they Rest in Peace.

55

Independent auditor’s report to the members of Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact)

Opinion

We have audited the financial statements of Prison Advice and Care Trust for the year ended 31 March 2021 which comprise the Group Statement of Financial Activities, the Group and Company Balance Sheet, Group Statement of Cash Flows and notes to the financial statements, including a summary of significant accounting policies. The financial reporting framework that has been applied in their preparation is applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards, including Financial Reporting Standard 102 The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).

In our opinion, the financial statements:

Basis for opinion

We conducted our audit in accordance with International Standards on Auditing (UK) (ISAs (UK)) and applicable law. Our responsibilities under those standards are further described in the Auditor’s responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements section of our report. We are independent of the Group in accordance with the ethical requirements that are relevant to our audit of the financial statements in the UK, including the FRC’s Ethical Standard, and we have fulfilled our other ethical responsibilities in accordance with these requirements. We believe that the audit evidence we have obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion.

Conclusions relating to going concern

In auditing the financial statements, we have concluded that the trustees’ use of the going concern basis of accounting in the preparation of the financial statements is appropriate.

Based on the work we have performed, we have not identified any material uncertainties relating to events or conditions that, individually or collectively, may cast significant doubt on the Group’s ability to continue as a going concern for a period of at least twelve months from when the financial statements are authorised for issue.

Our responsibilities and the responsibilities of the trustees with respect to going concern are described in the relevant sections of this report.

Other information

The trustees are responsible for the other information. The other information comprises the information included in the Trustees’ Report. Our opinion on the financial statements does not cover the other information and, except to the extent otherwise explicitly stated in our report, we do not express any form of assurance conclusion thereon.

In connection with our audit of the financial statements, our responsibility is to read the other information and, in doing so, consider whether the other information is materially

56

Independent auditor’s report to the members of Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact)

inconsistent with the financial statements or our knowledge obtained in the audit or otherwise appears to be materially misstated. If we identify such material inconsistencies or apparent material misstatements, we are required to determine whether there is a material misstatement in the financial statements or a material misstatement of the other information. If, based on the work we have performed, we conclude that there is a material misstatement of this other information, we are required to report that fact. We have nothing to report in this regard.

Opinions on other matters prescribed by the Companies Act 2006

In our opinion, based on the work undertaken in the course of the audit:

Matters on which we are required to report by exception

In the light of the knowledge and understanding of the group and the parent charitable company and its environment obtained in the course of the audit, we have not identified material misstatements in the Trustees’ Report (which incorporates the strategic report and the directors’ report).

We have nothing to report in respect of the following matters in relation to which the Companies Act 2006 requires us to report to you if, in our opinion:

Responsibilities of trustees for the financial statements

As explained more fully in the trustees’ responsibilities statement set out on pages 54 and 55, the trustees (who are also the directors of the charitable company for the purposes of company law) are responsible for the preparation of the financial statements and for being satisfied that they give a true and fair view, and for such internal control as the trustees determine is necessary to enable the preparation of financial statements that are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error.

In preparing the financial statements, the trustees are responsible for assessing the group’s and the parent charitable company’s ability to continue as a going concern, disclosing, as applicable, matters related to going concern and using the going concern basis of accounting unless the trustees either intend to liquidate the group or the parent charitable company or to cease operations, or have no realistic alternative but to do so.

Auditor’s responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements

Our objectives are to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements as a whole are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error, and to issue an auditor’s report that includes our opinion. Reasonable assurance is a high level of

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Independent auditor’s report to the members of Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact)

assurance, but is not a guarantee that an audit conducted in accordance with ISAs (UK) will always detect a material misstatement when it exists. Misstatements can arise from fraud or error and are considered material if, individually or in the aggregate, they could reasonably be expected to influence the economic decisions of users taken on the basis of these financial statements.

Irregularities, including fraud, are instances of non-compliance with laws and regulations. We design procedures in line with our responsibilities, outlined above, to detect material misstatements in respect of irregularities, including fraud. The extent to which our procedures are capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud is detailed below.

Based on our understanding of the Group and the environment in which it operates, we identified that the principal risks of non-compliance with laws and regulations, and we considered the extent to which non-compliance might have a material effect on the financial statements. We also considered those laws and regulations that have a direct impact on the preparation of the financial statements such as Companies Act 2006, the Charities Act 2011, and UK tax law.

We evaluated management’s incentives and opportunities for fraudulent manipulation of the financial statements (including the risk of override of controls), and determined that the principal risks were related to manipulation of results through journals testing and through income recognition. Audit procedures performed by the engagement team included:

A further description of our responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements is located on the Financial Reporting Council’s website at: www.frc.org.uk/auditorsresponsibilities. This description forms part of our auditor’s report.

Use of our report

This report is made solely to the charitable company's members, as a body, in accordance with Chapter 3 of Part 16 of the Companies Act 2006. Our audit work has been undertaken so that we might state to the charitable company's members those matters we are required to state to them in an Auditor's report and for no other purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than the charitable company and the charitable company's members, as a body, for our audit work, for this report, or for the opinions we have formed.

Lee Stokes (Senior Statutory Auditor) for and on behalf of Haysmacintyre LLP, Statutory Auditors Date: 24 September 2021

10 Queen Street Place London EC4R 1AG

58

Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact)

Consolidated statement of financial activities (including consolidated income and expenditure account) for the year ended 31 March 2021

Note
Income from:
Donations and legacies
2
Charitable activities
Investments
Total income
Expenditure on:
Raising funds
Charitable activities:
Building stronger families and safer
communities
Reducing risk of harm to prisoners and their
children
Removing barriers and increasing awareness in
public services
Influencing commissioning, policy and
legislation
Total expenditure
3
Net gains/(losses) on investments
Net income
Funds brought forward at 1 April 2020
Funds at 31 March 2021
14		 Unrest-
ricted
Funds
£’000
755
5,161
1
5,917
145
2,856
1,357
593
387
5,338
23
602
861
1,463		 Rest-
ricted
Funds
£’000
-
2,660
-
2,660
-
628
200
174
113
1,115
-
1,545
1,901
3,446		 Total
2021
£’000
755
7,821
1
8,577
145
3,484
1,557
767
500
6,453
23
2,147
2,762
4,909		 Total
2020
£’000
466
7,759
2
8,227
125
4,184
1,825
706
453
7,293
(7)
927
1,835
2,762

All of the above results derive from continuing activities. All gains and losses recognised in the year are included above. Full comparative figures for the year ended 31 March 2020 are shown in note 19. The notes on pages 62 to 74 form an integral part of these accounts.

59

Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Consolidated and charity balance sheets as at 31 March 2021

___________

Note
Fixed assets
Tangible assets
7
Investments
8
Current assets
Stocks
Debtors
9
Short-term deposits
Cash at bank and in hand
Creditors:amounts falling due
within one year
10
Net current assets
Creditors:amounts falling due
after more than one year
11
Net assets
Funds
Unrestricted general funds
Unrestricted designated funds
12
Restricted funds
13
Total charity funds
14		 Group
2021
2020
£’000
£’000
15
19
116
93
131
112
-
17
3,263
2,467
2,719
1,204
34
144
6,016
3,832
1,191
1,135
4,825
2,697
47
47
4,909
2,762
932
729
531
132
3,446
1,901
4,909
2,762		 Charity
2021
2020
£’000
£’000
15
19
207
184
222
203
-
17
3,124
2,257
2,229
858
33
143
5,386
3,275
1,029
991
4,357
2,284
47
47
4,532
2,440
655
520
431
19
3,446
1,901
4,532
2,440		 Charity
2021
2020
£’000
£’000
15
19
207
184
222
203
-
17
3,124
2,257
2,229
858
33
143
5,386
3,275
1,029
991
4,357
2,284
47
47
4,532
2,440
655
520
431
19
3,446
1,901
4,532
2,440
203
17
2,257
858
143
3,275
991
2,284
47
2,440
520
19
1,901
2,440

The accounts were approved and authorised for issue by the board of trustees on 24 September 2021 and signed on its behalf by

Phil Taylor Alastair Gordon Chair Treasurer

Company no. 356443

The parent company alone had total income of £7,536,000, total expenditure of £5,467,000, net gains on investments of £23,000, and net income of £2,092,000. The notes on pages 62 to 74 form an integral part of these accounts.

60

Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Consolidated and charity statement of cashflows for the year ended 31 March 2021

___________

Note
Cashflows from operating activities
18
Cashflows from investing activities
Interest income
Purchase of tangible fixed assets
Purchase of fixed asset investments
Cash provided by/(used in) investing
Cashflows from financing activities
Increase in borrowings
Cash provided by/(used in) financing
Increase/(decrease) in cash and cash
equivalents in the year
Cash and cash equivalents at the
beginning of the year
Cash and cash equivalents at the end
of the year		 Group
2021
2020
£’000
£’000
1,404
540
1
2
-
(19)
-
(100)
1
(117)
-
19
-
19
1,405
442
1,348
906
2,753
1,348		 Charity
2021
2020
£’000
£’000
1,260
317
1
2
-
(19)
-
(100)
1
(117)
-
19
-
19
1,261
219
1,001
782
2,262
1,001		 Charity
2021
2020
£’000
£’000
1,260
317
1
2
-
(19)
-
(100)
1
(117)
-
19
-
19
1,261
219
1,001
782
2,262
1,001
2
(19)
(100)
(117)
19
19
219
782
1,001

The notes on pages 62 to 74 form an integral part of these accounts.

61

Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Notes to the accounts for year ended 31 March 2021

___________

1. Accounting policies

The principal accounting policies adopted are as follows:

1.1 Basis of accounting

The accounts have been prepared in accordance with Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) (second edition, effective 1 January 2019) (SORP FRS 102), FRS 102 The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland, and the Companies Act 2006.

Pact meets the definition of a public benefit entity under FRS 102. Assets and liabilities are initially recognised at historical cost or transaction value unless otherwise stated in the relevant accounting policy note.

The accounts include those of Pact’s subsidiary company, and Pact Futures Community Interest Company, which have been consolidated on a line-by-line basis. In accordance with the provisions of SORP FRS 102, an entity Statement of Financial Activities has not been prepared as the separate results for the charity can be clearly identified.

1.2 Going concern

The trustees consider that there are no material uncertainties regarding the charity’s ability to continue as a going concern.

1.3 Critical accounting judgements and estimates

In preparing these accounts, management has made judgements, estimates and assumptions that affect the application of the charity’s accounting policies and the reported assets, liabilities, income and expenditure and the disclosures made in the accounts. Estimates and judgements are continually evaluated and are based on historical experience and other factors, including expectations of future events that are believed to be reasonable under the circumstances.

1.4 Income

Income from donations, appeals and legacies is included in the income and expenditure account when received. Other income is credited to the income and expenditure accounts when it becomes receivable. Income is deferred only if Pact has to fulfil conditions before becoming entitled to it or if the donor has specified that it be expended in a future period.

1.5 Expenditure

Expenditure is included in the income and expenditure account on an accruals basis. Expenditure incurred on activities falling directly within one cost category is attributed to that category. Expenditure that involves more than one cost category is apportioned on a reasonable, justifiable and consistent basis to the categories involved.

62

Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Notes to the accounts for year ended 31 March 2021

_______________

1. Accounting policies (continued)

1.6 Fund accounting

Unrestricted general funds are donations, appeals, legacies and other incoming resources receivable for the objects of the charity without further specified purpose laid down by the donor.

Unrestricted designated funds are amounts that have been put aside at the discretion of the trustees out of unrestricted general funds for specific future purposes or projects.

Restricted funds are to be used for specific purposes as laid down by the donor. Expenditure which meets these criteria is charged to the fund, together with a fair allocation of management and support costs.

1.7 Tangible fixed assets and depreciation

Individual tangible fixed assets costing £1,000 or more are capitalised at cost and depreciated.

Depreciation is provided in order to write off each asset over its estimated useful life at the following rates:

Leasehold improvements over the life of the lease Office furniture and equipment over 4 years

1.8 Stock

Stock consists of goods for resale and is valued at the lower of cost or net realisable value.

1.9 Debtors

Short-term debtors are measured at transaction price, less any impairment. Loans receivable are measured initially at fair value, net of transaction costs, and are measured subsequently at amortised cost using the effective interest method, less any impairment

1.10 Creditors

Creditors and provisions are recognised where the charity has a present obligation resulting from a past event that will probably result in the transfer of funds to a third party and the amount due to settle the obligation can be measured or estimated reliably.

1.11 Financial instruments

The charity only has financial assets and financial liabilities of a kind that qualify as basic financial instruments. Basic financial instruments, including trade and other debtors and creditors are initially recognised at transaction value and subsequently measured at their settlement value.

1.12 Operating leases

Rentals payable under operating leases are charged to income and expenditure account as incurred.

63

Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Notes to the accounts for year ended 31 March 2021

_______________

1. Accounting policies (continued)

1.13 Pension costs

Pact participates in a group stakeholder defined contribution scheme with Scottish Widows. The pensions cost recognised in the accounts equals the contributions payable to the scheme.

1.14 Redundancy and termination costs

Pact recognises employee redundancy and termination costs in full on the date the redundancy or termination is confirmed.

2. Donations and legacies

nations and legacies
Donations
Legacies
Grants		 2021
£’000
218
67
470
755		 2020
£’000
171
182
113
466

3. Total expenditure

Raising funds
Charitable activities
Building stronger families and
safer communities
Reducing risk of harm to prisoners
and their children
Removing barriers and increasing
awareness in public services
Influencing commissioning, policy
and legislation
Total expenditure		 Direct
staff
costs
£’000
87
2,790
1,271
526
337
5,011		 Other
direct
costs
£’000
15
479
207
101
78
880		 Support
costs
£’000
43
215
79
140
85
562		 Total
£’000
145
3,484
1,557
767
500
6,453

64

Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Notes to the accounts for year ended 31 March 2021

_______________

3. Total expenditure (continued)

Comparative figures for the year to 31 March 2020 are as follows:

Direct
staff
costs
£’000
Other
direct
costs
£’000
Raising funds
72
16
Charitable activities
Building stronger families and
safer communities
2,677
1,335
Reducing risk of harm to prisoners
and their children
1,248
516
Removing barriers and increasing
awareness in public services
483
110
Influencing commissioning, policy
and legislation
303
71
Total expenditure
4,783
2,048
Net income/expenditure is stated after charging:
Auditor’s remuneration – audit fees
Depreciation		 Support
costs
£’000
Total
£’000
37
125
172
4,184
61
1,825
113
706
79
453
462
7,293
2021
£’000
2020
£’000
15
16
4
4

Support costs includes governance costs of £27,000 ( 2020: £27,000 ), including staff costs of £10,000 ( 2020: £10,000 ) and audit fees of £15,000 ( 2020: £16,000 ).

4. Staff costs

aff costs
Salaries
Social security costs
Pension costs		 2021
£’000
4,511
368
132
5,011		 2020
£’000
4,309
351
123
4,783

Salaries include redundancy and termination costs of £46,000 for 14 employees ( 2020: £17,000 for five employees ).

65

Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Notes to the accounts for year ended 31 March 2021

_______________

4. Staff costs (continued)

The average full-time equivalent number of employees was:

Charitable and development
Administration and fundraising		 Group
2021
No.
167
11
178		 Group
2020
No.
174
11
185		 Charity
2021
No.
136
11
147		 Charity
2020
No.
147
11
158

The average headcount was 228 for the group ( 2020: 238 ) and 193 for the charity ( 2020: 209 ).

The number of employees who earned over £60,000 in the following range was:

2021 2020
No. No.
£80,001 - £90,000 1 1
£70,001 - £80,000 1 -
£60,001 - £70,000 1 1

Pension costs of £13,000 (2020: £9,000) were incurred for these employees.

The senior leadership team over the year to 31 March 2021 had the following members:

Post Post-holder
Chief Executive Andrew Keen-Downs
Deputy Chief Executive and Managing Director of Pact Futures Ellen Green
Director of Services Tina Parker
Assistant Director of Services Joanne Mulcahy
Director of Human Resources and Workforce Development Stephanie Stevenson
Group Finance Director Ross Holland

Remuneration and benefits paid to the senior leadership team during the year totalled £431,000 ( 2020: £369,000 ).

5. Trustees’ remuneration

No member of the board received any remuneration during the year (2020: none)

During the year, no trustee expenses were paid ( 2020: two trustees received reimbursement of travel expenses amounting to £769) .

6. Taxation

All income received by Pact comes within the exemptions as set out in section 505 of the Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1988 and Pact is therefore not subject to corporation tax.

66

Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Notes to the accounts for year ended 31 March 2021

_______________

7. Tangible fixed assets

Tangible fixed assets
Group and charity
Cost
At 1 April 2020 and at 31
March 2021
Accumulated depreciation
At 1 April 2020
Charge for year
At 31 March 2021
Net book value
At 31 March 2021
At 31 March 2020
Investments
Group
Listed investments
Charity
Equity investment in subsidiary
Listed investments		 Leasehold
improve-
ments
£’000
Office
furniture &
equipment
£’000
40
2
21
2
4
-
25
2
15
-
19
-
At 1 Apr
2020
Net gains/
(losses)
£’000
£’000
93
23


91
-
93
23
184
23		 Total
£’000
42
23
4
27
15
19
At 31 Mar
2021

£’000
116

91
116
207

8. Investments

Pact Futures Community Interest Company (Pact Futures CIC) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pact, company number 9248698. As at 31 March 2021, Pact Futures CIC owed Pact £93,000 ( 2020: £132,000 ).

Balance sheet of Pact Futures CIC:

Total assets
Total liabilities		 2021
£’000
722
254
468		 2020
£’000
690
277
413

67

Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Notes to the accounts for year ended 31 March 2021

_______________

9.
Debtors
Group
2021
£’000
Trade debtors
375
Owed by group undertakings
-
Prepayments and accrued income
2,888
3,263
10.
Creditors: amounts falling due within one year
Group
2021
£’000
Unsecured loan
27
Trade creditors
143
Social security & other taxes
190
Other creditors
23
Accruals
181
Deferred income
627
1,191		 Group
2020
£’000
338
-
2,129
2,467
Group
2020
£’000
27
199
233
21
152
503
1,135		 Charity
2021
£’000
183
93
2,848
3,124
Charity
2021
£’000
27
132
158
23
134
555
1,029		 Charity
2020
£’000
88
132
2,037
2,257
Charity
2020
£’000
27
195
194
18
115
442
991

The movement on deferred income relates to contracts for services to be provided on or after 1 April 2021, as follows:

At 1 April 2020
Released during the year
Deferred during the year
At 31 March 2021		 Group
2021
£’000
503
(172)
296
627		 Group
2020
£’000
361
(58)
200
503		 Charity
2021
£’000
442
(111)
224
555		 Charity
2020
£’000
361
(58)
139
442
11. Creditors: amounts falling due after more than one year
2021 2020
Group and charity £’000 £’000
Unsecured loan repayable 30 October 2022 47 47

The loan interest payable is calculated quarterly in arrears on the unpaid principal at the rate of 5% per annum. The outstanding loan amount is repayable in equal quarterly instalments between 30 January 2020 and 30 October 2022.

68

Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Notes to the accounts for year ended 31 March 2021

_______________

12. Unrestricted designated funds

The charity’s funds include the following designated funds which have been set aside out of unrestricted funds by the trustees for specific purposes:

Group
Fixed asset reserve
Through the gate delivery fund
Development fund
Charity
Fixed asset reserve
Development fund		 At 1 Apr
2020
£’000
19
113
-
132

19
-
19		 Funds
spent

£’000

(4)

-

-

(4)



(4)

-

(4)		 Transfer
(to)/from
unrestricted
general
funds

£’000

-

(13)

416

403



-

416

416		 At 31 Mar
2021

£’000
15
100
416
531

15
416
431

The fixed asset reserve represents the value of reserves attributable to tangible fixed assets and has been set up to assist in identifying those funds that are not part of free reserves.

The through the gate delivery fund was contract income earned from services delivered which remained available to reinvest in enhancing services offered. The trustees intended to use this fund to allow Pact to work with more service users and to enable changes to service delivery resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. Due to ongoing practical difficulties in implementing the planned service enhancements, funding is being designated to be spent over the next two years to support our welfare grants team during the transition period into new Probation contracts and from Covid-19, to support service user participation and involvement in the development of new services, and to strengthen our groupwork and one-to-one structured interventions in light of our new Probation services.

The development fund is surplus funds available to invest in sustaining the quality of services delivered and providing the foundations of the next stages of Pact’s growth. This will be achieved by prudently investing in infrastructure to free up frontline practitioners to do what they do best in supporting prisoners and their families, which will include increased staff support on health and safety, data protection and human resources as well as finance system improvements. We will also be investing in our business development capacity to develop new markets. We intend to use these funds over the span of our two-year corporate development plan.

69

Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Notes to the accounts for year ended 31 March 2021

_______________

13. Restricted funds

Restricted funds
Group and charity
Early intervention support for families (1)
Supporting families affected by imprisonment
(2)
Supporting children and young people
affected by imprisonment (3)
Providing groupwork and learning
opportunities (4)
Supporting volunteering (5)
Furthering rehabilitation in prisons and
communities (6)
Providing welfare grants (7)
Supporting resettlement (8)		 At 1 Apr
2020
£’000
57
370
754
41
41
393
35
210
1,901		 Income

£’000

29
370
185
-

135
1,643

100

123

2,585		 Costs


£’000

53
251
146
35

24
431

97

78

1,115		 At 31 Mar
2021

£’000
33
489
793
6
152
1,605
38
255
3,371

Notes

70

Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Notes to the accounts for year ended 31 March 2021

_______________

13. Restricted funds (continued)

71

Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Notes to the accounts for year ended 31 March 2021

_______________

14. Restricted funds (continued)

Full comparative figures for the year ended 31 March 2020 are as follows. There are no changes to the total figures, although we have shortened and simplified the presentation of the breakdown.

Group and charity
Early intervention support for families
Supporting families affected by imprisonment
Supporting children and young people
affected by imprisonment
Providing groupwork and learning
opportunities
Supporting volunteering
Furthering rehabilitation in prisons and
communities
Providing welfare grants
Supporting resettlement		 At 1 Apr
2019
£’000
102

154
151
74
75
669
8
193
1,426		 Income

£’000

15

420
698
-

-
50

32

132

1,347		 Costs


£’000

60

204
95
33

34
326

5

115

872		 At 31 Mar
2020

£’000
57
370
754
41
41
393
35
210
1,901

72

Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Notes to the accounts for year ended 31 March 2021

_______________

14. Analysis of net assets between funds

Group
Fund balances at 31 March 2021
are represented by:
Unrestricted
funds
£’000
Restricted
funds
£’000
Tangible fixed assets
131
-
Current assets
2,552
3,389
Current liabilities
(1,173)
(18)
Long-term liabilities
(47)
-
Net assets
1,463
3,371
Comparative figures as at 31 March 2020 are as follows:
Tangible fixed assets
112
-
Current assets
1,907
1,925
Current liabilities
(1,111)
(24)
Long-term liabilities
(47)
-
Net assets
861
1,901		 Total
£’000
131
5,941
(1,191)
(47)
4,834
112
3,832
(1,135)
(47)
2,762

15. Financial and other commitments

As at 31 March 2021, Pact had total commitments under operating leases as follows:

Property
£’000
Other
£’000
Due within one year
89
2
Due within two to five years
221
3
Total
310
5
mparative figures as at 31 March 2020 are as follows:
Due within one year
105
-
Due within two to five years
367
-
Total
472
-		 Total
£’000
91
224
315
105
367
472

Comparative figures as at 31 March 2020 are as follows:

16. Share capital

Pact is a company limited by guarantee and has no share capital. Every member of the company guarantees to contribute a maximum of £10 on winding up, up to one year after ceasing to be a member.

The number of members as at 31 March 2021 was 11 (2020: 10).

17. Related party transactions

There were no related party transactions during the current or preceding year.

73

Prison Advice & Care Trust (Pact) Notes to the accounts for year ended 31 March 2021

_______________

18. Reconciliation of net income to net cash inflow from operating activities

Group
2021
£’000
Group
2020
£’000
Net income/(expenditure) for the year
2,147
927
Add back depreciation charge
4
4
(Gains)/losses on investments
(23)
7
Deduct interest income shown as
investing activities
(1)
(2)
(Increase)/decrease in stock
17
4
(Increase)/decrease in debtors
(796)
(617)
Increase/(decrease) in creditors
56
217
1,404
540
19.
Comparative consolidated statement of financial activities (2020)
Note
Unrest-
ricted
Funds
£’000
Income from:
Donations and legacies
2
466
Charitable activities
6,412
Investments
2
Total income
6,880
Expenditure on:
Raising funds
125
Charitable activities:
Building stronger families and safer communities
3,648
Reducing risk of harm to prisoners and their
children
1,657
Removing barriers and increasing awareness in
public services
592
Influencing commissioning, policy and legislation
399
Total expenditure
3
6,421
Net gains/(losses) on investments
(7)
Net income/(expenditure)
452
Funds brought forward at 1 April 2019
409
Funds at 31 March 2020
14
861		 Charity
2021
£’000
Charity
2020
£’000
2,092
712
4
4
(23)
7
(1)
(2)
17
4
(867)
(517)
38
109
1,260
317
Rest-
ricted
Funds
£’000
Total
£’000
-
466
1,347
7,759
-
2
1,347
8,227
-
125
536
4,184
168
1,825
114
706
54
453
872
7,293
-
(7)
475
927
1,426
1,835
1,901
2,762		 Charity
2020
£’000
712
4
7
(2)
4
(517)
109
317
Rest-
ricted
Funds
£’000
-
1,347
-
1,347
-
536
168
114
54
872
-
475
1,426
1,901

74