Unique training course at HMP Highpoint, near Haverhill and Newmarket, is giving offenders ‘hope for the future’
A pioneering training course run at Highpoint Prison is seeing more than 80 per cent of its graduates going into employment after their release.
HMP Highpoint’s Rail Centre of Excellence program guarantees prison leavers’ employment upon release and gives them industry-standard training to lay and maintain rail infrastructure.
The project is funded by DfE’s skills bootcamps and facilitated by City & Guilds. The 22-day course involves a mix of practical and theoretical learning, with peer mentors providing training and support with English and maths, if needed.
Since its inception in August 2022, the City & Guilds and HMP Highpoint collaboration has, up to March 12 this year, delivered 10 railtrack courses with 107 men successfully graduating from the course and achieved a success rate of 81 per cent into employment.
City & Guilds is now trialling Highpoint, which is six miles from Haverhill, 11 miles from Newmarket and 13 from Bury St Edmunds, as a centre of excellence.
Alex Pond, executive director, City & Guilds Training, said: “If we are providing skilled workers this is a resource that they (employers) will tap into commercially, never mind the social impact and once they have worked with ex-offenders and realise they are real people who love, who care, who cry and they can make a difference, I think the UK will change the revocation programme.
“We’ve got so many people in the HMP community that just want a second chance.
“Three weeks ago I was coming out of a classroom, in this very prison, when a prisoner stopped me and said I’ve been in prison for 18 years and he said in 18 years this was the first time he had been given hope and that was it.
“He completed the course and he is now working on the railway.”
Ex-offender Othman completed the course and is now employed on the railway.
He said: “I had seen it and thought, you know, why not. I’ll give it a shot and see how it goes.
“I started the course and yeah, it’s been great since then.
“Gaining skills that I needed to get on to the railway, it gives me the opportunity to get straight into work upon leaving prison. It just totally minimised the possibility of me going back to reoffending.”
Another offender, Daniel Gibbins, said: “Trainers and staff in this prison have been like a God blessing for me, in a sense.
“I’ve had nothing. I have come here and they are good, they interact, they don’t treat you like a prisoner, they treat you like a work colleague.
“The course in itself was like that for me. It wasn’t as If I was coming here to do a course, it was like I was going to work.
“It’s hope for the future as well. I’ve never had that before.”
Aron White, prison employment lead at Highpoint, which is Suffolk’s biggest prison, said: “The programme works because there is support within the prison and upon release there’s a lot of support within the community, from City & Guilds, and that wraparound support has been integral to making sure that the men harness the opportunity upon release.
“We have offered it around the prison estate and we’ve been lucky enough to receive a few from HMP Belmarsh and we are completing training with prisoners from HMP Hollesley Bay.