Andy Ludlow Award 2004

“Being a peer adviser is a way of improving other people’s lives at the same time as helping yourself. For me, it was the right thing at the right time.”

Juan Salgado is talking about the work he did for homelessness charity the St Giles Trust when he was in prison, which involved giving fellow inmates information on housing. Since being released in January, he has been employed as a case worker with St Giles’ Camberwell care team – where he now makes use of the skills he learned as a peer adviser.

“It was the first time I’d done that sort of interviewing,” says Salgado. “I think the project should be implemented everywhere.”

Stable housing can reduce re-conviction rates by up to a fifth, as research by the government’s social exclusion unit has shown. With this in mind, the St Giles Trust provides housing and resettlement advice to short-term and remand offenders at HMP Wandsworth in south London and an increasing number of prisons elsewhere in the country – a scheme that has netted it the top prize in the Andy Ludlow Award 2004.

The peer adviser scheme came about when the trust realised it could solve some of its own problems by asking the inmates to help.

As Diane Gault, funding manager for the trust’s prisoner peer advisers project, explains, St Giles simply didn’t have the resources to cope with the 3000 short-term and remand prisoners who arrive every year at Wandsworth and need screening, or the 1500 offenders leaving every year with nowhere to live.

So now, all short-term and remand incomers to Wandsworth are offered screening by the prison’s peer advisers, who provide advice on resettlement and housing to fellow prisoners. There are currently eight advisers on the scheme, five of whom have completed NVQs. In total, 18 Wandsworth inmates have worked as advisers and completed NVQs since the project was launched.

“Peer advisers look at individual housing needs,” says Gault. “An inmate may have an existing tenancy that can be saved or may have been homeless when they were sentenced. Case workers employed by the trust deal with more complex cases, but peer advisers manage tenancy saves [preserving a tenancy for when an inmate is released] and housing and support referrals.

“And although our main focus is housing, we have a wider remit and act as a referral service, so the advisers also look out for any alcohol, drug and mental health problems.”

As peer advisers, unlike St Giles’ own employees, are on site 24 hours a day, they have a greater understanding of what the people they advise are going through. The time each peer adviser dedicates to their role varies according to prison routines, but averages 15 hours per week. Advisers are paid the same rate as other work done by inmates such as cell cleaners: £10 per week.

Being a peer adviser improves other people’s lives at the same time as helping yourself

Juan Salgado, former peer adviser

In the 12 months to December 2003, peer advisers have worked with 1250 prisoners at Wandsworth, each one helping 20 people

a month. Seventy-two tenancies have been saved; 510 people have been given housing advice and 350 referred to support services. The scheme is overseen by one paid member of St Giles’ staff.

It’s not only the trust and the clients of its services that benefit from the scheme – the experience can be very useful for the advisers themselves. Since April 2002, the trust has been using the scheme to train inmates for NVQ level 3 in advice and guidance – their work as peer advisers counts towards the qualification. St Giles is the first and still the only organisation to help prisoners progress towards a nationally recognised qualification in a large

high-security prison, although other open prisons do use peer advisers.

When the advisers gain an NVQ level 3, they are achieving the equivalent of two A levels. Offenders trained to this standard provide high-quality advice to a large number of prisoners, which has the added advantage of increasing the scope of services at a relatively low cost.

The trust aims to use the peer adviser roles, for which any serving prisoner can apply, as preparation for employment on release. “We want applicants to know that being a peer adviser is no easy option,” says Gault. “We have formal job applications and make interviews as rigorous as possible.”

The £10,000 Andy Ludlow prize money will be used to support advisers on their release, securing them volunteer and job placements and funding travel expenses.

St Giles also set up a peer adviser pilot at HMP Bullingdon, Oxfordshire, in July 2003.

It catered for more than 1000 people in its first year. The trust is now setting up schemes in HMP Brixton in south London and in several Kent prisons, including its first women’s prison, Cookham Wood. It aims to take the project to 10 more jails by 2006.