Choices

This project supports young people who are not in eduction, training or employment (NEET) to find and sustain training and employment. Funded by the Minton Trust, it helps young people who are facing complex barriers such as homelessness, family breakdown, leaving care, being young carers or teenage parents.

Choices works closely with other organisations such as Nacro, Centrepoint and TGB Learning who all provide in-house training to their clients.  Our caseworker on Choices supports the young people who have very chaotic lifestyles and backgrounds to stay engaged and motivated with their training through structured one-to-one and group work sessions. Choices also helps young people access further training, paid and voluntary employment.

This relatively new project has got off to a flying start.  In just six months, 27 young people completed the Choices Motivation and Engagement course, 14 progressed to further training or education, 6 found work placements and 3 successsfully found paid employment.

Read about one young woman who was helped through Choices here.

Find out more information in our Skills and Employment section here.

 SOS Project

This award-winning project offers intensive support to persistent and prolific young offenders to help them break free from crime - particularly gang-related crime. It works with young people both in prison and in the community, offering a tailored package of support for each individual to help them identify and realise alternative aspirations and goals away from a life of crime. It also works with young people at risk of getting involved in the criminal justice system.

SOS can help an individual across a wide range of practical and emotional areas including housing, help accessing education, employment and training, and help to re-establish positive ties with family and siblings.  It is staffed entirely by trained, reformed ex-offenders who have first hand experience of the issues their clients are facing. 

The project works with Young Offender Institutions, focussing primarily on young people being released to south London. We also provide communtiy-based support.

Private funding has enabled us to develop a community-based support service working with young people at risk in Kensington and Chelsea. Behind the wealthy pockets of this borough are areas of severe deprivation blighted by youth crime.  Find out more about how one young man from this area was helped to turn his life around by clicking here.

Funding from the Barrow Cadbury Trust through their Transition to Adulthood (T2A) pilot has helped us to provide community-based support for young people in Croydon who are involved in the criminal justice system or at risk of becoming so. The caseworker provides intensive support to help young people move their lives forward in a positive way.  

We are also providing community work in the London Borough of Greenwich, south east London by supporting ex-offenders and young people at risk in the community. 

The project is funded through a range of sources including Southwark Council, The Barrow Cadbury Trust's Transition to Adulthood (T2A) Pilot for London, private funding and charitable trusts.

SOS Plus

Preventative work with young people at risk of gang crime, with the aim of preventing them becoming caught up in this lifestyle, is now provided through the SOS Project Plus.  Ex-offender volunteers trained through St Giles Trust are working with schools in London to inform students on the dangers of getting caught up in gang crime, particularly with regard to weapons.

If you are a parent or guardian who is worried about gangs please click here. 

If you are a young person who is worried about getting caught up in gang lifestyles, please click here.

To find out more about our SOS Project, please visit the SOS website here.