TurnAround

What we do

HACRO (Hertfordshire Association for the Care and Rehabilitation of Offenders) is a predomminantly Grant Funded charity, helping people in Hertfordshire who have been on the wrong side of the law to turn their lives around. We believe in second chances.

Our vision is a world in which everyone on the wrong side of the law has the chance to turn their lives around and lead a life fully contributing to society. We deliver our vision through programmes that build capability and confidence, delivered with respect and integrity. Our mission is to offer support for offenders, potential offenders and their families to make positive changes in their lives and thereby reduce the number of victims of crime.

We do this by providing mentoring support and a range of training and well-being programmes. We also work with other local charities to provide individualised and need needs-based support.

All this experience and expertise has allowed us to create our flagship programme – TurnAround.

Introduction

HACRO’s flagship programme, TurnAround launched on 1st January 2023 as a personal development programme that provides support, purpose, engagement, structure and opportunity to ex-offenders in their journey back to the community.

 

How we got to TurnAround

After a change in funding and a comprehensive review of the areas that we have specialised in for nearly 50 years we decided to use our expertise and experience to create what we believe to be the optimal program in Hertfordshire for difficult to reach ex-offenders.

Our research showed there are no other providers of a holistic, needs-based support programme within Hertfordshire which is validated by the fact that 49 referrals were received in our first two months of operation.

 

Who we work with

We work with some of the hardest to reach ex-offenders and those most likely to offend/reoffend. Our Participants, all of whom are 18+, come from a wide variety of backgrounds across the whole of Hertfordshire.

 

Where our Participants come from

Over the past 10 years our referrals have come from a wide range of organisations. This hasn’t changed with TurnAround and the greatest numbers have come from Probation and the Police but given our reputation we also receive a significant number of referrals from third sector organisationsas well as self-referrals.

 

Participant Involvement

A number of our staff are themselves ex-offenders and have spent time within Prison. This gives us invaluable experience of, and insights into, the challenges faced by our Participants. This has allowed us to put in place individualised and holistic ways to support and engage as well as helping us to continually develop the programme. These staff were instrumental in the creation, setting up and of TurnAround.

We have also engaged with our Participants to understand their needs and requirements and this research was used in development of TurnAround. This programme is ever evolving as different areas of support are identified by both staff and Participants.

The programme provides individual support through one-to-one mentoring and signposting to other relevant charities and group support through skills development and wellbeing training programmes. Participants also undertake community projects that enhance the communities in which we all live, a way of giving back.

Through our individual work with Participants we identify areas of ability, interest and expertise which has allowed us to set up a number of programme activities such as Tennis – where one of our Participants has become reacquainted with Tennis and has qualified as a LTA Tennis Coach as well as another Participant setting up his own fishing business and helping to set up our Fishing activity and subsequently volunteering for this activity.

Support for Dads in Prison

The programme builds life skills by focusing on four key areas:

Job Vacancies

Unfortunately, we have no current vacancies, please check back in the near future.