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Case Study
#Yorkshire5in5
Unlocking Potential & Creating Employment Pathways for Prison Leavers
The Challenge
Prison leavers face significant barriers to employment, with many overlooked by employers despite possessing valuable, transferable skills. Traditional CVs often fail to reflect the breadth of knowledge, experience, and abilities individuals develop before or during custody, limiting their opportunities upon release.
The #Yorkshire5in5 project aimed to redefine employment pathways for serving inmates across Yorkshire prisons, by identifying their transferable skills, delivering career coaching, and developing individualised skills-based employment profiles, a data-driven structured alternative to the traditional CV.
Funded by Construction York, a project led by CHY Consultancy in partnership with City of York Council, and backed by £300,000 from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, the initiative sought to bridge the gap between prison and employment by providing data-driven insights into individual potential.
This initiative is a fantastic example of how social value funding can be used to create real opportunities for individuals while supporting safer communities through reducing the risk of reoffending.
You have inspired us and made us really think about how we can get to where we want to be. Maybe we have been criminals in the past, but we are still human and our goals/dreams are still reachable.
The Solution
Working across different prisons in Yorkshire spanning the men’s, women’s and YOI estates, our team focused on identifying skills, building self-confidence, and creating structured employment pathways.
The Transferable Skills Reports provide a common framework that enables both employers and individuals to interpret and assess skills in a way that transcends traditional job titles, qualifications and/or CVs. By mapping competencies to real-world applications, these reports bridge the gap between experience and opportunity, ensuring that talent is recognised based on ability rather than background.
Key Activities
- 228 hours of in-prison candidate engagement committed.
- Conducted 57 structured skills surveys to evaluate prisoners’ transferable skills and career potential.
- Developed individualised, skills-based employment profiles—providing an alternative to the traditional CV that puts skills & competency at the fore.
- Delivered one-on-one career coaching, ensuring participants could understand their reports and apply the insights.
- Engaged a Lived Experience Consultant who helped design the programme and engaged the candidates via inspirational talks out the outset of each visit.
- Provided coaching & a user manual to Prison Education Leads (PELs) and staff to support optimised use of the reports.
- Engaged local employers to agree to adopt the survey if and when hiring from local prisons.
Uncovering Hidden Potential in Prisons
Through skills mapping surveys, we identified that many participants possessed highly valuable transferable skills, including:
- Leadership & Team Coordination – Experience managing teams, mentoring peers, and handling responsibility.
- Problem-Solving & Critical Thinking – Ability to adapt, work through challenges, and find creative solutions.
- Technical & Practical Expertise – Backgrounds in construction, engineering, IT, logistics, and skilled trades.
- Customer Service & Communication – Strong verbal skills, conflict resolution, and adaptability to different environments.
[The reports] are way more in-depth and personalised than I imagined they would be! They are also arguably better than any CV we ever send to an employer. They’ll be particularly useful with the prisoners who have no idea on what employment industry they wish to pursue, or for those who have never had an external employment position.
The Results
Creating Employer-Ready Profiles
Traditional CVs fail to reflect the depth of skills that prison leavers develop during their sentences. The structured skills-based employment profiles created in this project were described by Prison Education Leads (PELs) as more impactful than traditional CVs.
Building Confidence & Career Awareness
One-on-one coaching sessions were crucial in helping individuals understand their skills, set career goals, and gain confidence in their employment prospects. Many participants had never considered their existing skills as valuable, but this project gave them a new perspective on their potential.
Engaging Employers & Driving Social Value
A key outcome was highlighting the business case for hiring prison leavers. The project delivered a 515% social value ROI, reinforcing the economic and societal benefits of creating employment pathways for this talent pool.
Empowering Structured Upskilling in Prison:
We’ve recognised that while this framework is highly beneficial for post-release employment, it also provides prison education teams with a valuable tool to align in-prison skills development, training, and qualifications with an individuals’ natural strengths and competencies. By using the insights from these reports, education teams can structure learning more effectively, ensuring that development pathways are tailored to each individual’s abilities, ultimately leading to stronger employment outcomes upon release.
Conclusion
The #Yorkshire5in5 project has demonstrated that prison leavers have enormous potential, but traditional hiring processes often fail them. Through this initiative, we have successfully uncovered hidden skills, built confidence, and created structured employment pathways that challenge outdated assumptions about hiring from the justice system.
This project reinforces the urgent need to move beyond CV-based hiring when it comes to supporting prison leavers into employment. This skills-first approach empowers individuals to articulate their value in the jobs market while giving employers a consistent, evidence-based method to assess potential, drive inclusive hiring, and unlock hidden talent.
The impact goes beyond just employment; it provides stability, purpose, and a second chance to those who are often excluded from mainstream opportunities. By shifting the focus to skills-based employment pathways, we can help reduce reoffending, support economic growth, and create lasting social impact.
The skillsets available to employers within prisons is vast! The people with those skills are good people. The way the reports personify the participants will remind employers that we are all human. There is opportunity to relate to the people behind the reports – and my word they are so much more engaging than a CV!!! I think I would say this is the thing I am most proud of achieving in my career to date. You’ve all made that possible.