Most of our 22 women residents are on licence from prison and stay at Elizabeth Fry for 4-12 months. Our staff aim to support women to begin to address the issues they face, to improve their lives and reduce the likelihood of further offending. We would like to engage the services of a counsellor to complement this work.to

We are seeking funding to support a counsellor, whose work will complement the interventions being carried out by our key workers. A pilot scheme carried out in 2011 by the counsellor we would like to employ demonstrated that counselling and coaching have a positive impact on residents' confidence and self-esteem, enabling them to make positive changes to their lives.

We hope that the combination of key worker and counsellor intervention will enable our residents to address the factors that led to their offending and reduce the likelihood of them reoffending in future. The beneficiaries of our work will be not only the residents themselves, but also women in need in the Reading area whom we hope to engage in our work. The public in general will also benefit if the women make successful changes to their lives and no longer offend.