In February 2010, the Corston Independent Funders’ Coalition and the Ministry of Justice announced the creation of a joint £2m fund to divert women from custody. The Women’s Diversionary Fund focuses on:
- Supporting organisations to develop new one-stop-shop services for women offenders
- Developing existing one-stop-shop services further
- Building the capacity of the women’s offending sector

The projects supported are:
Nottingham Women’s Centre – to develop the centre’s services and diversionary activities for women offenders
Advance – to fund a criminal justice worker for its Minerva women offenders’ project in Brent and Hammersmith & Fulham
The Relationships Centre – to develop their services for women offenders at Halton Women’s Centre
Novas Scarman Group – to provide a court and outreach service for women offenders in Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire
One25 – to fund a criminal justice caseworker to work with female street sex workers in Bristol
YWCA England & Wales – to develop their services for women offenders in Cornwall
Hafan Cymru – to expand its work with young women offenders in Powys and Ceredigion
Clean Break – to expand its work with women offenders in London
The Women’s Centre Forum (grant held by WomenCentre Ltd) – to develop and independent national forum for diversionary and community services for women offenders and women at risk of offending.

The Howard League say:

These annual awards are a wonderful opportunity to highlight all the outstanding work going on around the country to make our neighbourhoods safer. Community sentences are proven to reduce reoffending and allow people to make amends for what they have done and live law-abiding lives.
The work of the winning schemes will be publicised locally and nationally. The award winners will be invited to a conference and celebratory event to be held on 20 July 2010 at Kings Fund, London. Max Clifford will be our keynote speaker who will address the conference on ‘how to promote community sentencing’.

Do you know of any community programmes, which you think should be considered? Nominations should be received by 4 May 2010. Further information on the awards can be found by visiting http://www.howardleague.org/community-programmes-award.

The Corston Independent Funders’ Coalition is an alliance of charitable trusts and foundations working together to reduce the numbers of non-violent women in prison. The members of the Coalition are all grant-makers, with years of experience of working in the criminal justice system.

The Women’s Diversionary Fund will be used to provide grants to third sector organisations to support further growth in community services for women and contribute to building the confidence of courts in alternatives to custody.

The Women’s Diversionary Fund builds on the substantial progress already being made to divert women away from crime. In 2009 the MoJ announced £15.6 million of new funding over two years to invest in women’s community projects delivered by the third sector and other specialist provision for women in the community. These projects provide services for female offenders who are not a danger to the public, and for women who are at risk of offending.

Maria Eagle MP and Ministerial Champion for Women and Criminal Justice Matters said:

“This exciting partnership between the Ministry of Justice and the alliance of charitable trusts forming the Coalition represents a commitment on both sides to transform further the way women are treated by the criminal justice system. By working together in this exceptional way we will build on the initiatives already announced.

We have already made good progress in taking forward our strategy to divert women from crime. Over the last two years I have ensured there is a specific push to direct resources to stop vulnerable women from becoming trapped in a cycle of crime. Women’s offending is a complex phenomenon which burdens society, damages children and families, and creates misery for the women themselves.”

Georgina Nayler, Director of the Pilgrim Trust, and chair of the grants panel of the Corston Independent Funders’ Coalition, said:
“The Coalition is delighted to be working with the Ministry of Justice on this groundbreaking initiative. Every year charitable trusts and foundations invest millions of pounds in supporting charities working with offenders – and this experience gives us a real insight into what works to reduce women’s offending. Supporting alternatives to custody takes us one step closer to the vision laid out in the Corston Report where community solutions for non-violent women offenders become the norm.”

Further information about the Women’s Diversionary Fund is available here.

The written ministerial statement announcing the Fund is here.

“Seeking to press for full implementation of the Corston recommendations, 19 independent foundations, including the Diana Memorial Fund and the Bromley Trust, have joined forces – in an effort that they claim is unprecedented – to hire a full-time advocate to press for Corston’s agenda.
Antonia Bance, a former Oxfam campaigner who started in the advocate’s post this month, says the new funds demonstrate real commitment. However, she warns: “A two-year pot of money isn’t going to achieve systemic change.” “

Journalist Beth Gardiner met Antonia Bance, Teresa Elwes from the Bromley Trust, Samantha Rennie from the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund and Peter Kilgarriff from LankellyChase Foundation a couple of weeks ago. We had a good conversation with her about our hopes for the Coalition, and about the situation of women in the criminal justice system more broadly. Read the whole piece here.

The conference programme says:

The session will look at the development of the Corston Independent Funders Coalition (CIFC), a unique partnership between 19 independent grant-makers and philanthropists who have come together to support the implementation of the Corston Report: the Government review into vulnerable women in the Criminal Justice System.

Funders, such as grantmaking trusts, foundations and individual philanthropists, know that this collaboration is unusual, to say the least. Although many funders share information and may even co-fund individual projects, there has never been a coalition focussed on achieving sustainable policy change before. At least, not in the UK – this way of working has been tried in the United States, with some success. The Philanthropic Initiative have written an excellent paper on some of the models tried out by funders in US, Donor Collaboration: Power in Numbers, which is available here (registration required). Definitely worth a read – and if that whets your appetite to find out more, do join us at the workshop at the ACF conference!