Trailblazers is currently piloting a new “mutual mentoring” programme supported by Deloitte, a leading global professional services firm. With support from fellow criminal justice organisations Cracked It and StandOut, the new six-week programme will offer around a dozen young men the opportunity to take part in tailored, one-to-one mentoring sessions with partners and senior employees from Deloitte.

Over the course of four, hour-long sessions, the young men – all of whom have been supported by Trailblazers, Cracked It and StandOut in their last months of custody and then “through the gate” as they return to their communities – will receive advice and guidance from industry professionals to aid them with their personal and professional development.

In addition to the one-to-one sessions, Deloitte is providing four employability and financial skills workshops, delivered over Zoom and tailored to provide support with navigating the challenges of a post-pandemic job market. These employability sessions will cover a range of topics including online interview skills, searching for jobs online, and dealing with financial and tax fundamentals. These workshops will also be open to other young men we work with who could not take part in the mentoring pilot, as well as their Trailblazers and StandOut mentors so that the knowledge can be more widely shared.

As this is designed to be a mutual mentoring programme, there will also be an emphasis on the Deloitte mentors learning from it. Before the start of the programme, all mentors underwent training provided by Trailblazers staff, which covered the issues faced by young men with lived experience of the criminal justice system. In addition, Deloitte mentors will gain valuable insight from extensive first-hand interaction with young men who have recent experience of prison, a disproportionate number of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds, are BAME, are care leavers, and have experience of abuse. The hope is that the insight gained by Deloitte mentors will positively influence recruitment policies and inform corporate social responsibility actions taken by organisations like Deloitte to help the sector diversify and change for the better.

Cracked It, a social enterprise that trains and employs young people with convictions to deliver phone repair services and who are a part of Deloitte’s 5 Million Futures programme, will deliver an evaluation report at the end of the pilot summarising its outcomes. We hope this pilot will create a foundation for further collaboration with corporate organisations in the future. Such partnerships will be geared towards delivering meaningful opportunities to the young men we work with so they can achieve their full potential.