In last week’s Leader I mentioned schemes I’d learned about over my years in this industry, which involved the training of prison inmates in work that would give them the chance of meaningful employment when back in the outside world and thus help prevent them from reoffending. This week I’ve learned about two interesting projects – one run by Kärcher UK that involves training inmates in Rutland’s Stocken prison to repair Kärcher equipment, which offers the potential to embark on a new career as a service engineer or the like upon release(see below for details) and another involving charity and Social Enterprise, The Bounceback Project. 

  

Bounceback, which began in 2010, initially trained and employed prison leavers as painters & decorators. The scheme has expanded into training hubs in four London prisons and now also encompasses fire door safety, general building and grounds maintenance, emergency repairs and refurbishments. “Our team have grown into skilled tradespeople, who act as role models and mentors for trainees and new recruits joining us all the time,” says the organisation, which has now supported around 10,000 people across London. “We run employability contracts across London and diversionary activities for young people at the point of custody.  We’re grateful to City & Guilds and our network of employers, who continue to collaborate so that we’re able to offer training which leads to jobs.” I’m thinking that this is probably a scheme in which the cleaning & facilities management industry should try and get involved, since it seems an excellent fit. Visit https://www.bouncebackproject.com for details. 

  

Incidentally, in researching the prison being used in Kärcher UK’s training scheme, (since it’s one I’d not heard of previously) I learned via Wikipedia that in February 2021 an outbreak of Covid-19 in the prison caused Rutland to have the highest infection rate per 100,000 people in the country. I haven’t yet learned whether it had a cleaning-related program in place at the time or whether it hurriedly set one up as a result, but I’m looking into it!