A framework for helping ex-offenders start up in business

The importance of delivering enterprise skills

Re-offending costs this country a staggering £13 billion a year, before counting the costs to the victims of crime.   Offender learning and skills these days is focused on getting ex-offenders into jobs.  Having a job halves the likelihood of re-offending.  So success in delivering relevant learning and skills to offenders carries large social benefits.

The arithmetic is simple and compelling, as is the argument in favour of including self-employment in the syllabus.  The most recent figures show that some 26% of new arrivals at the prison in which I work state “self-employment” as their previous occupation.  This is a significant proportion of the total. 

Many have operated in the ‘grey economy’ outside of the financial and taxation system.  They lack the knowledge and understanding necessary to operate legitimately.  This in itself puts these people in heightened danger of re-offending on release.   Further, they have been engaged in enterprises that are themselves illegal, such as dealing drugs or trafficking stolen goods.  That is frequently the extent of their market knowledge.

However, many show valuable entrepreneurial qualities, like ambition and drive.  They are prepared to take risks and have traded successfully, all be it in an occupation that incurs imprisonment as a significant business risk.   The prize for the teacher of enterprise skills is to give students with such potential the opportunity to consider and engage with a business idea that is legal; all the better if that student can be offered financial and mentoring support after release to help make their change of direction permanent.   Mentoring services cuts the risk of failure for a new micro enterprise from about 50/50 in the first two years to more like 80/20 in favour of survival.

There is another strong argument for delivering enterprise skills in prison.  For some ex-offenders self-employment offers the only route to gainful employment.

Delivering enterprise skills in a prison is relevant to the ambitions of the students.  So it tends to be popular with them and the courses are well attended.    It is rewarding to the tutor to give recognisable and practical benefits to the students.  There are established agencies that can deliver vital support to help resettlement of students in the community.  Above all it links directly to employment outcomes that can cut re-offending. 

Lessons learned

One of the key roles for a local prison, like the one in which I work, is to serve the courts by housing and producing remand prisoners as court processes require.   Local Prisons are the entry point of offenders into the prison system.  Hundreds of prisoners come and go in the course of a week.  The consequence is that there is a high degree of churn.  Teachers may only have a student for three months or less before they are transferred or released.

This is a very testing environment in which to successfully deliver educational courses.  Lessons learned are liable to offer robust solutions to fellow practitioners.  Here are some lessons from my experience.

It is important to offer main stream courses that are available in many prisons and in the community.  This gives the chance of some continuity despite the fact that, in our overcrowded prisons, offenders are liable to be moved from prison to prison.

Given this churn, courses need to be organised into short units which are individually accredited and which add up to provide a complete delivery of a subject, in this case enterprise skills.  The combination of short and commonly available units gives the student the chance to achieve a coherent and rewarding progression path in uncertain circumstances.

One of the most important elements of a viable business plan is market research.  All too often the plans of a new business are long on optimism and short on market fact.  It is difficult for a student to research a market from prison.  Trade press is hard to come by.  Telephone communication is limited and the internet is not available.  Further, the return address for enquiries does not give a positive impression.

There are a number of ways of breaking the barriers to doing necessary market research.  Firstly I encourage my students to guess at things they don’t know, like the cost of an item of equipment.  Group discussion often refines the judgement through the benefit of input from the varied experience of fellow students.  Further, a guess is perfectly respectable in a business plan provided you call it an ‘assumption’ and list it as a subject for future market research.  

Most importantly my role is part of a larger resettlement process.  My job is preparing students as best I can for working with mentors after release, to make their plans a reality.  The organisations which support business start-up in the community offer better opportunities for ex-offenders to do their market research. Helping students to form a well organised set of assumptions, to be tested by market research when the opportunity arises, is a useful contribution to the overall process.

Selling skills are important to any budding entrepreneur.  It is important to be a confident communicator, to be able to turn strangers into happy customers who want to come back for more.  Further and as a fall-back, if an ex-offender can sell it is not so difficult for them to get a job despite having a record.

I have adapted speaking and listening skills and customer services units from an established syllabus to provide the basis of a sales course.  We work on presentation skills to give our aspiring entrepreneurs the confidence to be successful.

Providing a structured portfolio framework for students is important.  It helps them to organise their work more quickly.  This gives them time to go more deeply into areas that they individually decide are of particular interest, whilst also completing the requirements for certification.  

Encouraging students to create marketing materials, such as leaflets and sales letters, is often stimulating for the students, especially if it can be linked to Desk Top Publishing in the ICT domain.   Getting them to put together considered cash forecasts for the first year of operation is also rewarding in terms of helping students to integrate all the aspects of a plan.  Such self-defined activities may go beyond the strict requirements for accreditation, but they are important if the student is to create a viable plan.

A framework for delivery

Last year I adapted units from the National Open College Network (NOCN) Progression syllabus to provide the accredited framework for delivery of our enterprise skills programme.  There are many short units offered in this syllabus that can be mixed and matched to achieve varied learning and skills objectives.  They are recognised and accepted by the Learning and Skills Council.  They therefore comply with the requirements of the Offender Learning and Skills Service, within which we operate. 

This paper concludes with a brief description of this course which I called “Salesmanship and Enterprise”.  Reference is given to a location on the internet where interested tutors can get the relevant course portfolio frameworks and gapped worksheets that have been developed in collaboration with the London office of NOCN.  As a taster, I attach the flyer used to promote the course.

There are five units in the framework at present.  These are:

·         Demonstrating Speaking and Listening Skills

·         Developing Customer Service Skills

·         Undertaking an Enterprise Project

·         Developing Communications Skills for Business

·         Personal Budgeting and Money Management.

Each unit can be completed in 20-35 contact hours, dependent on the demands of the unit.  Effective results can be obtained by rolling through them on a sequential basis.

The Speaking and Listening Skills unit is a good place to start.  It is an icebreaker and helps to form the group.  Also the rest of the course enables practice of these vital verbal communication skills. The group is asked to organise a meeting to decide on a product or service.  From then on we adopt the role of a sales team working together to put together a sales programme for the selected product or service.  Role play is used to practise sales meetings. 

The Customer Service unit considers how to make the client feel valued, including effective handling of complaints.  The Enterprise Project is the most demanding unit, requiring the assembly of the components for a personal business plan.  Here I let them dwell on the unit to develop their own sales materials and cash forecast/financial plan. The Communication Skills unit helps with business letter writing, telephone technique and managing business meetings.

The overall approach involves delivering a practical course based as far as possible on the student’s own ambitions and the realities of running a start-up.  Embedded within it are many of the competences needed to achieve a successful start-up.  Crucially it benefits from delivery by staff with practical experience of running their own business. 

I have personally witnessed someone get the hard bit right (starting a successful business) only to fail by not being able to handle the money sensibly.  Success can be the greatest danger for the unprepared.  So Personal Budgeting and Money Management is an important part of the mix.

I try to ensure that successful candidates are introduced to relevant support organisations before their release. For further information on this aspect of our practice see http://www.thelearningjourney.co.uk/news_item.2006-07-26.4642512493  and  http://www.thelearningjourney.co.uk/enterpriseday13march08

Resources

The portfolio framework for each of the above units is available for download in PDF format from the library in the member’s area of www.thelearningjourney.co.uk .  Membership is free.  Just click the “join” link. 

Alternatively request the files by email from ask@thelearningjourney.co.uk.  

Help with delivering NOCN courses can be obtained from http://www.nocn.org.uk .