“Excellent training session – one of the most useful I’ve done in my 25 year career. Everyone who helps and gives advice to people with criminal records should do this – it should be mandatory”
JobCentre Plus Adviser
“I should have done this 8 years ago when I started the job – I thought I knew about disclosure, but this session really opened my eyes and I learnt so much – well worth the 3 hour train journey each way!”
Probation Officer
- Are your staff up-to-date with the laws around disclosing criminal records?
- The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act changed in 2014 for the first time in 40 years.
- The DBS now has a system for ‘filtering’ cautions and convictions
- Do your staff feel confident in advising your clients on whether they need to disclose, and if they do, how to do so?
- Giving accurate and good quality advice to people with convictions will help them to increase their chances of finding and keeping a job!
“According to a Government report, only 29% of prison leavers received advice on dealing with their criminal record from the Work Programme”
This section of our website sets out some of the ways in which we work in partnership with organisations that deliver front-line services to help people with convictions.
- If you’re a probation provider, see the specific information we have on how we can help.
- If you’re a front-line practitioner, see the information we have for how we can help you as an individual practitioner that supports people with convictions.
About us
Unlock is an independent award-winning charity, providing trusted information, advice and advocacy for people with criminal convictions.
Working closely with the Ministry of Justice, Home Office, Disclosure & Barring Service and Disclosure Scotland, we are a leading charity in England & Wales in understanding criminal record checking processes and the impact of these systems on the lives of people with criminal convictions. As a result, we are a ‘go-to’ place for charities, resettlement service providers, probation staff and others who are looking for advice on behalf of their clients.
Find out more about our approach to working with other organisations.
Our offer
- We are experts on criminal records and disclosure
- We provide training and support to organisations and practitioners, to help them to provide accurate and effective support to their clients that have criminal convictions
- This includes running in-house ‘criminal record disclosure’ training to suit the needs of your staff:
Two-day training courses | One-day workshops - We can also provide use of our innovative tool, disclosurecalculator.org.uk.
- We can also provide bulk hard-copies of our materials/resources
- We can deliver disclosure workshops to individuals
- We work with a range of service providers, including probation services, employment projects, careers advisors and community support services across England & Wales
- For example, we provide training to all staff that work for a community-based employment project in the South East that targets young people that are out of work
- Our training is endorsed by the Probation Institute and the Institute of Employability Professionals
Our USP
- Unlock doesn’t deliver government contracts or services – we support those that do
- We are an independent advocacy charity for people with convictions
- We are a peer-led charity, run and staffed by people who have a criminal record
- First and foremost, we respond to the issues that people with convictions face – getting access to accurate, reliable advice is a key charitable objective of ours, and underpins this area of our work
- Our independence and approach enables us to work across the board with a range of providers of services in a collaborative and non-competitive way
Our impact
In the last year:
- We reached over 400 different practitioners by providing training and support
- Our disclosure calculator was used over 40,000 times to work out when convictions become spent
“This training should be mandatory for all probation officers. I’ve done this job for 6 years ago and I can’t believe it’s taken this long to find out about all of this. This is going to really help me to give people confidence to trust what I’m telling them”
Senior Probation Officer
As an ETE team in Probation there is an expectation that advisors offer advice and support to service users about the declaration of offences when applying for work. The Rehabilitation of Offenders act changed in 2014, changing spent periods and other legalities. The team identified a training need to update their knowledge of this to enable continued appropriate advice to service users. There was no training available internally although the team did have the updated guidance from the Ministry of Justice.
The team already used the Unlock website as a resource and discovered training was available. Feedback from this was that it was very helpful for the knowledgeable trainer to summarise the changes to the Act and to answer any questions the team had. It was then also useful to go through real examples to work out spent periods. This gave advisors confidence to support service users to calculate their spent periods and/or access Unlock’s online tools to do this.
We regularly put any new members of our team on upcoming training that Unlock run – we believe it’s an integral part to their skills.”
Education, Training and Employment (ETE) Manager
Looking to commission a service?
Just to be clear, Unlock is not a service delivery organisation and we do not take government funding to deliver such support. We don’t compete to deliver contracts and we do not duplicate or replicate support that should be being provided elsewhere.
It is, however, vital that those organisations who are contracted to deliver these services, have the skills and knowledge to enable them to provide accurate, reliable and up to date advice and support to those clients who have criminal convictions, particularly on issues relating to criminal records, disclosure and access to employment, training and education.
This is where Unlock can help. We have a range of support available for organisations which includes:-
- free access to our Information Hub
- in-house training workshops and bookable training sessions for staff
- the option to sign up to receive email updates.
Ultimately, mistakes can be costly. We have seen many examples where people have lost jobs and others opportunities as a result of being given inaccurate advice.
In particular, it’s important that employability professionals understand a number of key areas when it comes to criminal records. That’s why we’ve worked with the Institute of Employability Professionals (IEP) and have published a ‘10 things about criminal records’ guide aimed specifically at employability professionals. The guide is designed for practitioners that support people with criminal records into employment, including employability professionals, job centre advisors, careers advisors and probation officers. The guide is available to download and forms part of IEP’s range of ’10 things’ guides. We hope it serves as a useful introduction and reference point for employability professionals. It provides an overview of the key areas, following a similar structure to that taken by our ‘Advising with Conviction’ one-day training course.
If you are interested in finding out more about our in-house training, please email admin@unlock.org.uk or call 01622 230705.
For more information
- There are links below to more details about the things we offer
- Find out more about our approach to working with other organisations
- Get in touch to find out how we might be able to help your organisation
- Contact admin @unlock.org.uk or call 01622 230705
