StandOut launches new strategic plan
As we launch our strategy for the next two years, we also announce our new value - Courageous - which will guide our work with people leaving London prisons in 2024-2026, and beyond.
Read our Strategic Plan 2024-2026
Our last strategic plan launched in the spring of 2021, as we began to emerge from the greatest disruption to society since WW2. The upheaval caused by Covid-19 had reached into every aspect of our lives and created a crisis within a crisis in our prisons. StandOut’s strategy was ambitious and focused on creating strong foundations upon which to support more people through our programmes.
We delivered on that plan; developing the support we offer after release from prison, opening in HMP Wormwood Scrubs, and strengthening our infrastructure, operations, and fundraising. This is thanks to the dedication and professionalism of our team and their tireless commitment to going above and beyond for our participants, but also our partners in prison and the community. Not forgetting, of course, the amazing generosity of all our supporters.
The backdrop of our last strategic period was that of a prison system subject to external pressures such as the cost-of-living crisis, and pressures unique to the criminal justice system. Issues with staff recruitment and retention – and shifting contracts and providers – were compounded by an ever-increasing prison population (due to sentence inflation and the courts backlog) that had also led to a change in its composition (high levels of people on remand, each held for an average 305 days).
Sadly, nothing has changed. As highlighted by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) and Independent Monitoring Boards (IMB) there continues to be insufficient rehabilitation support in our prisons. Today our unique, relational work is needed more than ever to fill the gaps left by an under-funded, under-staffed and struggling prison and probation service.
This is the moment to review the journey so far and to plan where our next – courageous – steps will take us. We do that while recognising that a core strength must be to ‘keep the main thing the main thing.’ For us that means centring the needs of people in prison - informed by our experience, the feedback we receive, and the astute and insightful reflections of our Experts Beyond Bars.
As we launch our plan for the next two years, we see that all aspects of our work interlink; feeding off and into each other in ways that are mutually reinforcing and positive. This reflects and reinforces our belief in our unified team.
So often a strategy is built on an assumption of growth. StandOut may grow – but only if we can maintain quality, develop sustainable capacity, explore collaborations and partnerships, and be certain that we will have a positive impact.
I hope this inspires you and that – in whatever role you connect with us – you will join us in this endeavour to bring change at every level.
Penny Parker