Offering a lifeline for change to prisoners

A BUSINESSWOMAN from Rustington has launched an innovative scheme to give prisoners a second chance at living a life without crime.

Victoria Wadey, 28, of Rackham Road, is the owner of the Boathouse, in Ferry Road, Littlehampton.

Ms Wadey has come up with an ambitious project to use her business to give specially selected inmates at Ford Open Prison a chance to turn their lives around.

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She will be offering some inmates a 12-week course of work where they can achieve a number of qualifications.

Although they won’t be paid for their efforts, the prisoners will be accruing cash which Ms Wadey will keep safe in a grant pot – that she would control.

They can then dip into it to pay expenses to help them hunt for employment after they are released from jail.

“Some people may have made mistakes but they shouldn’t have to pay for them for the rest of their lives,” she said. “Not everyone has broken the law but some of those who have have not had the opportunities that most of us enjoy.”

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Ms Wadey, who took over the café in May, knows exactly how prisoners can fall into a vicious circle of re-offending if they aren’t given the right post-release support.

Before opening her business in Littlehampton, she worked with the NHS in a number of capacities, for about eight years.

Initially she began her career as a mental health nurse, before becoming a nurse at a psychiatric inten-sive care unit.

Towards the end of her nursing career she spent time working at a patient detox ward and helping homeless people in hostels in Brighton.

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Ms Wadey said that many of those she dealt with – some fresh from prison – were released into an environment which made it tough to get back on the straight and narrow.

“This is about integrating prisoners into the com-munity,” she explained. “Too often they are left on the outside of society without any real support.

“It becomes very easy for them to re-offend. My idea will give them a real chance at living a life without crime.”

All prisoners who are given a place to work at Ms Wadey’s business will go through a rigorous risk assessment.

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She has already had her first pilot scheme which proved fruitful.

“We had one man come to work here and it’s honestly changed his life,” she said. “This was someone who was homeless, in prison and had a difficult life. Now he has further education, a job and a flat of his own.

“More importantly he is not re-offending because he doesn’t need to. He is happy.”

She is currently in the process of finding grant support to back her idea.

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She hopes that, if the scheme proves successful that more traders will join it.

Her ultimate ambition would be to create hub where prisoners could, for an afternoon a week, use computers to write CVs and search for jobs.

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