Kate Price, who will be going into her second year in the BA Criminal Justice with Offender Management degree in September, wrote a blog article for us last year about her experiences volunteering in Criminal Justice Sector. She is a proactive student and is now a paid staff member at CGL. She has written another blog post detailing the work involved and how you too can gain experience volunteering within the Criminal Justice sector, in custody and the community.

My Journey continues to grow…..

I previously wrote a blog and touched on how far I had come and what I had achieved in a short space of time, starting with applying to Staffordshire University in September 2018 after deciding I wanted to pursue my dream of working within the Criminal Justice sector both in custody and in the community, I was accepted on to the Criminal Justice with Offender Management Course to my delight and that was the beginning of fantastic things for me.

I decided to get some experience volunteering with offenders and ex-offenders through Change, Grow, Live (CGL – previously known as Sova), and after training I was given the opportunity to support service users at Probation, meet with individuals who needed support after being released from prison or fetch clients from prison on the day of their release and assist them with getting to their first probation meeting or to their home address/nearest train station, it was exactly the kind of experience I needed and it was a great insight. 8 months later I was informed that there was a job being advertised on the company website and that because I had been an active Volunteer I would be a good candidate, I was encouraged to apply for the role of Volunteer Coordinator, which I did…. And I was successful!! I am now a full time, paid staff member at CGL and I get to look after around 20 amazing Volunteers.

If you would like to become a volunteer please click on the link here and request an application pack as we are always in need, I would really like to encourage BOTH men and women to apply, we are in desperate need of some male volunteers if you know anybody that you think would like to join us please share our details.