The Shannon Trust was founded in 1997 by Christopher Morgan MBE, a farmer from Sussex. In the early 1990s he joined a pen friend scheme run by the Prison Reform Trust and began corresponding with a life sentenced prisoner, Tom Shannon. Through Shannon's letters, Morgan learned about prison life and about the shocking levels of poor literacy amongst prisoners. In 1995 the letters were put together in a book titled, Invisible Crying Tree. The royalties from the sale of the book were used to found the Shannon Trust.
Morgan took his idea for the Shannon Reading Plan to the Director General of the Prison Service who was sceptical and challenged him to make it work in HMP Wandsworth, a notoriously busy prison in London. It took a further three years of experimentation before the Shannon Reading Plan really started to impact on the lives of non-reading prisoners.
In 2001, Neil Lodge, a prison officer at HMP Wandsworth, took an interest in the Shannon Reading Plan and by the end of the year he had developed a workable plan and produced 48 new readers. Lodge observed that those involved not only benefited from learning to read but also from increased confidence, raised self-esteem and improved behaviour.
The major breakthrough came through the discovery of ‘Toe by Toe’ which is designed to help children and adults learn to read from the beginning. The Shannon Trust Reading Plan is a peer mentoring programme that encourages and supports prisoners who can read to give one-to-one support to prisoners who struggle to read. The Reading Plan, which runs in almost every prison in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, now uses Turning Pages, a reading programmed developed by the Trust specifically for adults in custody.
The Shannon Trust has been granted charitable funding from many sources. Christopher Morgan and the Shannon Trust have won awards for their contribution to learning in prisons, including The Longford Prize in 2004 and the Centre for Social Justice award in 2005.
His Majesty's Prison Service (HMPS) is a part of HM Prison and Probation Service, which is the part of His Majesty's Government charged with managing most of the prisons within England and Wales.
HM Prison Wandsworth is a Category B men's prison at Wandsworth in the London Borough of Wandsworth, South West London, England. It is operated by His Majesty's Prison Service and is one of the largest prisons in the UK.
HM Prison Birmingham is a Category B men's prison, located in the Winson Green area of Birmingham, England. The prison was operated by G4S from 2011, before it was returned to HM Prison and Probation Service in August 2018. The government takeover was originally planned to be temporary pending improvement, but became permanent in April 2019.
St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, formerly called St George's Healthcare NHS Trust, is based in Tooting in the London Borough of Wandsworth, and serves a population of 1.3 million across southwest London. A large number of services, such as cardiothoracic medicine and surgery, neurosciences and renal transplantation, also cover significant populations from Surrey and Sussex, totalling about 3.5 million people.
HM Prison Frankland is a Category A men's prison located in the village of Brasside in County Durham, England. Frankland is operated by His Majesty's Prison Service.
The Forum on Prisoner Education was a UK registered charity founded in 2000 to campaign to improve prison education in England & Wales. Its founding members included Professor David Wilson, and a manager of education at HMP Wandsworth in London.
In the United Kingdom, prisoners are divided into four categories of security. Each adult is assigned a category, depending on the crime committed, the sentence, the risk of escape, and violent tendencies. The categories are single letters, in alphabetical order, with 'A' as the most secure, and 'D' the least.
HM Prison Brixton is a local men's prison, located in Brixton area of the London Borough of Lambeth, in inner-South London. The prison is operated by His Majesty's Prison Service.
HM Prison Lancaster Farms is a category C male prison, located on the outskirts of Lancaster, Lancashire, England. The prison is operated by His Majesty's Prison Service, and is part of the HMP North Lancashire and Cumbria Estate.
HMP Bedford is a Category B men's prison, located in the Harpur area of Bedford, Bedfordshire, England. The prison is operated by His Majesty's Prison Service.
The Prison Advice and Care Trust (Pact) is an independent UK charity that provides practical services for prisoners and prisoners' families. First established as the Catholic Prisoners Aid Society in 1898, Pact works at several prisons across England and Wales.
HM Prison Whatton is a Category C men's prison, located in the village of Whatton, near Bingham in Nottinghamshire, England. The prison is operated by His Majesty's Prison Service, and houses males convicted of sexual offences.
HM Prison Exeter is a category B local and resettlement men's prison, located in Exeter in the county of Devon, England. It holds men sentenced by the courts of Devon, Cornwall, Dorset and Somerset. There are also prisoners from further afield who have been transferred from other prisons. Exeter Prison is operated by His Majesty's Prison Service.
HM Prison Littlehey is a Category C male prison in the village of Perry near Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire, England. Littlehey Prison is operated by His Majesty's Prison Service. The Prison only holds those that have been convicted of a sexual offence.
HM Prison Grendon is a Category B men's prison, located near the village of Grendon Underwood, in Buckinghamshire, England. The prison is operated by His Majesty's Prison Service, and is jointly managed with HMP Spring Hill which is situated next to Grendon.
His Majesty's Prison Bure, more commonly known as HM Prison Bure, and often abbreviated to HMP Bure, is a Category C men's prison, located in the parish of Scottow in Norfolk, England. The prison is operated by His Majesty's Prison Service, and became operational in November 2009.
National Prison Radio is the world's first national radio station for prisoners. It is run by the Prison Radio Association, a charity, in partnership with His Majesty's Prison Service and the National Offender Management Service. It broadcasts 24 hours a day, seven days a week to prisoners in over 100 establishments across England and Wales. Prisoners receive the service as an audio channel via in-cell TV systems. It is available to over 80,000 prisoners.
The Prison Radio Association (PRA) is a British prison-based charity that operates National Prison Radio, a radio station which broadcasts programmes made by and for inmates in over 100 prisons in the United Kingdom and is the world's first national radio station of its kind.
Storybook Dads is a non-profit charity in the UK founded by Sharon Berry and first launched in HM Prison Dartmoor in 2003. The charity enables serving prisoners and detainees to record bed time stories which can then be sent home to their children, and aims to maintain connections between serving prisoners and their families. In women's institutions the project operates under the name Storybook Mums.
The Safer Living Foundation (SLF) is a British charity focused on reducing sexual offending and reoffending through rehabilitative and preventative initiatives. It operates in Derby, Derbyshire, Leicester, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire.
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