Our work builds a better society - one where everyone has good people around them, a purpose, and a good place to live.
This year we supported 7,296 young people and their families to improve their personal outcomes, feel safe, cared for and find a purpose in life. We work with children and care leavers, children missing from home or facing exploitation. We work with young people in the justice system, those with substance misuse and emotional wellbeing needs.
We believe that everyone has an active role to play in their community, and we support young people and adults to do so through volunteering, engagement and reparation. This year we delivered the National Citizen Service (NCS) to 4737 young people, who clocked in over 250,000 social action hours and raised over £150,000 for local causes. 90% of our young NCS participants told us that they were more socially conscious as a result of our work.
Mainstream schools aren’t always right for all students, all of the time. Sometimes, high needs learners need more support than a traditional academic environment and sometimes, vocational qualifications are more appropriate for a young person. This year we supported 556 students in our independent schools and 475 students in our Colleges. 95% of students at a Catch22 College feel that their life has been improved through their time with us.
Catch22 works across the criminal justice cycle, to help people steer away from crime, support rehabilitation and help people feel safer in their communities. This year we worked with 24,303 young people and adults in 23 prisons and in the community, providing a range of services including offender management and resettlement, veterans in custody, victim services, gangs work and youth justice. We believe that supporting victims of crime is integral to building a stronger society. This year we’ve delivered victims services and restorative justice work to 25,244 people in nine regions across England.
Catch22 delivers high quality and responsive apprenticeships and employability programmes built around the needs of learners and job seekers, helping organisations develop a future pipeline of strong, diverse talent. This year Catch22 supported 1,056 people to improve their job readiness through our employability work. In the 2017/2018 financial period we supported 984 apprentices, working with levy and non-levy paying organisations like npower, Vodafone, Countrywide, Rendall and Rittner and Gtech. 87% of our apprentices go on to positive destinations after completing their programme with us.
We launched the Catch22 Multi Academies Trust (MAT) in 2014, an approved Academy Sponsor which focuses on students who can benefit from small, supportive alternative education provision. Today the MAT runs six schools in Hampshire, Devon, Northamptonshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, supporting 348 pupils. Its statistics show that 85% of its learners have Special Educational Needs (SEN). 75% of learners showed Good/Outstanding progress at the end of the 16/17 academic year across English, maths and science.
People need flexible services; services that adapt, grow and change to account for complexity and personalisation, and the conditions must be created to allow this.
Chris Wright, our Chief Executive
This year we celebrated our 229th birthday. As good a year as any to do some soul searching - why do we exist? This year we recognised that scale is essential for development, but not the reason for being, and encouraged other non profit leaders to shift their focus away from scale and towards the impact they can achieve.
“We think it’s as important to recognise what went wrong – and what we learnt from it – as it is to celebrate our success. We are an organisation constantly striving to improve and innovate,” writes Naomi Hulston, our Chief Operating Officer. So, what went wrong this year?
"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." Maya Angelou
Over half of our colleagues are women, and 50% of our senior leaders are women.
Of our colleagues have a family member or close friend with lived experience of the criminal justice system.
This year Catch22 was supported by 233 volunteers, generously giving their time.
While the availability of public funding continues to decline and service user need increases, we are confident that our solid foundation and financial prudency will enable us to meet those challenges.
Nigel Richards, our Chief Financial Officer
We will improve our own impact by ensuring our Group structure is coherent, effective and efficient, and by investing in our frontline teams.
We will make better use of transparent evidence, insights and feedback to establish self-improving systems.
We will do this in partnership with other organisations, investing in new ideas through our Incubator Programme and by building national and local networks for change, across all sectors.
We need public services that share the goal of helping everyone to be the author of their own life story.
Pamela Dow, our Chief Reform Officer