Here at The Coaching Academy, we are committed to creating opportunities where people feel respected, heard, included and confident to show up as their true selves and reach their full potential in life. We are therefore delighted to be partnering with Breakthrough, a social enterprise and the UK’s first apprenticeship provider to recruit directly from prisons.
Breakthrough are a social enterprise that supports, selects and trains exceptional prison leavers to build digital careers. They run pre-apprenticeship programmes and then place people into employment opportunities as apprentices.
As the UK’s first apprenticeship provider to recruit straight from prisons, Breakthrough are dedicated to a future in which every prison leaver has a pathway to employment that inspires and fulfills them.
There is an overrepresentation of minority groups in UK prisons, and due to limited post-release support, a lack of meaningful employment contributes to the UK having one of the highest re-offending rates in the world. Nearly half of prison leavers reoffend within a year. This creates a knock on effect: continuing cycles of crime with more victims in our communities, over £18bn spent in tax payer money, and loss of talent in job markets.
Prison leavers who are employed are half as likely to reoffend as their unemployed peers. However, only 16% of prison leavers are employed within a year. Breakthrough’s solution focuses on employment as the key driver for success, but also collaborates with other organisations to build a holistic support springboard.
This is where The Coaching Academy comes in.
Breakthrough offers an 8-week employability and soft skills programme, our team are delivering personal development training as part of this programme. The 8-week programme is carried out two or three times a year, and our DISC training team provides a half day fully immersive learning experience which covers the DISC Model of Human Behaviour, giving delegates a greater understanding of their strengths, communication and behaviour preferences.
By completing their own DISC personality profile, delegates learn how to understand their own preferences and how these impact others, therefore leading to the advancement of their career prospects and minimising possible misunderstandings that can arise in everyday interactions.
Breakthrough's mission and vision reflects our own values and vision. So, we are proud to collaborate with Breakthrough as part of our commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility. At The Coaching Academy, we’re dedicated to having a positive impact on the world and creating a future that represents us all.
Corporate Social Responsibility recognises that there are other objectives in business alongside profits. It’s about having a positive influence on the world, whether that’s through supporting social enterprises, minimising your carbon footprint, or collaborating with charities.
We’re incredibly proud of our reputation that we’ve built over the past 24 years. The Coaching Academy began offering coach training when there weren’t any other UK-based training organisations for coaches. Now, we’re at the forefront of coach training with students from across the globe and we want to ensure that our legacy continues to inspire and motivate those that train with us to make a positive impact on the world around them.