Last week a colleague and I had lunch at Roast, a classy
restaurant in Borough Market, London. There are two notable things about Roast.
The first is that they proudly employ chefs who have been trained by The Clink.
The Clink is a charity whose sole aim is to reduce the reoffending rates of
ex-offenders by giving them training in practical skills that will aid their
rehabilitation. In particular, they train them as chefs.
At any one time there are over 150 prisoners going through
The Clinks training process. In addition to the hands-on experience and
real-value qualifications, the ex-offenders also get assistance with interview
techniques and a comprehensive mentoring scheme for the first 12 months once
they are in their new job. Purely by chance I happen to know the CEO of The
Clink and he recently shared with me some statistics. It costs £46k to house a
prisoner for a year in the UK. In their first year this cost is actually nearer
70k, due to the court costs. The average reoffending rate (within 12 months) is
26.2% (Ministry of Justice, 2013 – see I even did
some real research!). For juveniles this reoffending rate rises to
36.6%. This is completely crazy. It is a societal failure on a breath-taking
scale.
To put a prisoner through The Clink training programme costs
just £4k. The reoffending rates of Clink-trained ex-offenders is less than 10%.
The numbers quite simply speak for themselves. This is a gloriously successful
venture. But let’s ignore the numbers and think instead about the impact
on society. People whose lives were unravelling have been given a chance to earn
a salary, to contribute, to have respect. They have been given a chance to get
their lives back.
So why am I, a water industry man, so excited about this?
As we ate our (terrifically tasty) meal we talked about the challenges the
water sector faces and it became obvious that the water industry needs a
Clink-like initiative. I can’t tell you the number of times I have attended
conferences where speakers pontificate over the crisis that we are facing due
to the depleting number of skilled field-workers. How, they ask, can we ensure
we have adequately trained staff to keep our aging assets maintained and
operating? It doesn’t take a genius to join the dots and see that we need a
Clink-like initiative for the water sector.
Perhaps (hopefully) there is already a similar scheme in
place, but I have not heard of it. One of my missions for the next few months
is to explore this further. If you feel minded to join me on this journey I
would love to hear from you.
The second notable thing from our visit to Roast was that
the waitress who showed us to our table was wearing the tightest, most sheer,
most revealing pair of trousers that either me or my colleague had ever seen. I
have no doubt that other diners also questioned whether she was actually
wearing any underwear, it was that revealing. When I got back to the office and
mentioned this to my female colleagues and they commented that she was
‘probably wearing spandex’. This phrase means absolutely nothing to me and has
only served to heighten my interest further.
Of course, it goes without saying that a Note discussing
ladies underwear is totally inappropriate and crass. However had I entitled
this Note ‘Two blokes go to a restaurant and have an idea’ then few of
you would have bothered to read this far. I trust you don’t feel too cheated.
If you have suggestions on how we can develop the idea of training ex-offenders
to work in the water sector then I would love to hear from you. This concept has
to be worthy of further investigation. If you can explain what spandex is as
well then even better.
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