Saracens Foundation | Get Onside

Get Onside aims to reduce the reoffending of prisoners at HMYOI Feltham & HMP The Mount. The form that our support takes varies with each participant but includes the same three core stages – in prison, in work and in the community. We aim to keep our participants on a consistent path towards a life they can be proud of.

Over an 8-week programme, 20 participants engage in a series of personal development workshops, each week focusing on a different theme, such as overcoming adversity and building resilience. Our full- time project officer supports up to 40 offenders each year, delivering twice annually at HMP/YOI Feltham and HMP The Mount. Through these workshops and 1-1 mentoring, participants draw upon key learnings and fundamental principles to be able to re- frame their existing thoughts and behavioural patterns that led them to prison.

The morning sessions are centred around personal development, employability and life skills. We try to embrace and promote soft skills that can be taken forward to improve our participants’ chance of finding positive outcomes upon release.

The learnings derived from the classroom curriculum such as the required resilience needed to keep applying for jobs after potential rejections, are reinforced through the process of becoming a rugby team.

Half-way through the programme, the participants plan and host a Touch Rugby Tournament within the prison. Held at the end of week 3 of the Get Onside programme, participants are responsible for organising every aspect of the event and are also asked to be referees on the day. The event is a great opportunity for participants to engage with a wide range of professionals, all of whom are keen to support ex-offenders on their rehabilitative journey – this is often the course highlight for a lot of our participants.

After 8 weeks of intensive training, the participants put everything they have learned to the test, as they participate in a full contact, 80-minute game against an external team who train and play regularly together. For the game, the participants are allowed to invite families and friends in to watch. It makes such a difference for the visiting families to be able to actually see their loved ones being productive and performing a new, learned skill. Often this would be the first time they’ll have seen each other outside of a prison visitor’s centre in several years. It is a truly special moment of the course. It is often impossible to understand this project’s importance to the individuals we support and how it helps them to want to change their lives. The easiest way of doing this is by learning more about some of the participants.

This is DB’s Story.

DB graduated the Get Onside course in March of 2024. He began the course as – in his own words – “a tired, old man, who played rugby once or twice at school”. DB served in the armed forces for 22 years and whilst taking responsibility for his behaviour, attributes some of the blame behind his conviction, to his struggle reintegrating back into society after leaving the army. Thankfully, our Project Officer was quickly able to build a fantastic rapport with DB, which led to DB engaging quickly with the course content and encouraging his peers to do the same. Over the first few weeks of the course, he became a diligent contributor in the group and was voted Team Captain by his course-mates.

DB thrived in this role and consistently demonstrated leadership qualities in both classroom sessions and rugby training. In 1:1 conversations with the Project Officer, DB explained that he had a passion to start his own business on release, but would like advice on how to begin this process. Our Project Officer used the Careers Fair to introduce him to various organisations that could offer support/advice, but also reached out to Op NOVA (a charity specializing in rehabilitating veterans into society) on DB’s behalf. Op NOVA initiated conversation with DB and helped him to write a preliminary business plan over the Email-A- Prisoner platform.

5 months after graduating the course, DB still attends rugby training every Tuesday and Thursday and is now co- captain of The Mount’s first team. DB is a shining example of what the course can offer with good engagement from participants. During the eight week programme, DB lowered his MCAA score by over 55% - The MCAA score is what we use to analyse our participants’ propensity to engage in violent, criminal or harmful behaviours upon release. 55% shows a huge shift in attitude, our average across all of our graduates is around 35%.

Moving into the last year of his sentence, DB still engages where he can with the Get Onside course through his Saracens-appointed mentor, and if his gym time ever overlaps with a Get Onside session he will make sure to pop his head in and offer some words of wisdom to the current participants of the course. DB informs us that he will use a lot of the lessons learned through Get Onside when talking to his Offender Management Officer about parole and his release, he told us that he’s definitely going to show his reduced MCAA score at any opportunity as well! We are keen to see what DB can do in his last year at The Mount and will make sure to provide him any support upon his release too.

“Overall the course was fantastic. I was lost before the course with no direction of where to go. But now this course has put myself and my life back together. Thank you, Saracens Foundation”. – DB, Get Onside Graduate, March 2024.

To find out more about Get Onside, or if you would like to come to our next Touch Tournament on the 21st of November, please email JackWright@saracens.net

Get Onside is proudly partnered with StoneX and BNP Paribas.