Only Connect is 20 years old this year - and is making a new start with a new chief executive.
London’s prisons and probation system are in crisis, reflecting a wider crisis in our economy and society. Yet - based on our experience - we believe in the potential for renewal in individuals and communities.
To achieve renewal we need a new approach. After years of working (with some success and some failure) as part of the status quo, we want to pioneer a completely different way of supporting people involved in crime.
The heart of our work is the primacy of relationships. We don’t believe the main things ex-offenders need are a home and a job. The main things they need - like everyone else - are good character and good relations with family, friends, and the professional world.
Relational skills are the key deficit among prisoners and ex-offenders. Equip people with the personal ethics and the ability to get on with others, and everything else - employment, housing, and desistance from crime - will follow.
Only Connect has developed a project we call Love & Money, designed to engage prisoners and ex-offenders in the task of acquiring relational skills. Focusing on the key issues of personal finance and family relationships, we take our members through a course of group work and 121 sessions in prison, with ongoing support and further opportunities after release.
We currently deliver this project in HMP Wormwood Scrubs and HMP/YOI Feltham, and with ex-offenders on probation at our base in King’s Cross.
We are working with the Ministry of Justice to conduct a comprehensive research project to demonstrate the efficacy of the project, and with commissioners and donors to construct a funding model for future expansion.
We are looking for a new CEO to take forward the charity and deliver Love & Money across the London prison and probation system.
There is no precise ‘person spec’ for this role because there is no precise ‘job spec’. We are looking for someone with the skills and personality to lead a small team and to engage successfully with prisoners and ex-offenders, with public officials, with our donors and with the media. You will be able to deliver hands-on work in prisons, produce reports, and manage budgets. Most of all, you will demonstrate the character and the relational abilities we want our members to acquire.
Only Connect has strong assets. We have a great base - a former Baptist chapel in King’s Cross - which is its own self-funding social enterprise, offering desk space to other businesses and charities, many of whom support our work. We have a network of loyal donors and volunteers. We have a great team. We have an engaged board of trustees, including the two founders who remain closely involved in the work. We have the experience and track record to give us, and our partners, confidence we know what we are doing.
But we are at a turning point, and we need a new leader with the spirit of an entrepreneur. The CEO will be free to innovate with our model, recruit new staff and develop new relationships and funding streams on behalf of the charity.
We don’t know who we’re looking for - but we’ll know them when we find them! If you think it might be you, please contact Savi Uppal at savi.uppal@onlyconnectuk.org with a short career summary and a few sentences explaining your interest in the role. We do not require a full CV and personal statement at this stage.
About Us
Only Connect was founded by Emma and Danny Kruger in 2005. Over the last 20 years the charity has worked in most London prisons and almost every London borough, delivering crime prevention and rehabilitation projects to prisoners, ex-offenders and young people.
Emma Kruger is a qualified teacher with a background in mainstream education, Pupil Referral Units and Emotional and Behavioural Difficulty Units; she has delivered Only Connect’s work in prison and the community since the charity’s foundation. Danny Kruger MP MBE, who has chaired the charity since its foundation and led it as CEO for its first nine years, is a former Government adviser on civil society; he is also the founder of the West London Zone for Children and Young People (now operating across the UK as AllChild).
The charity is advised by Tim Lloyd, head of family services in the National Prison and Probation Service (NPPS); Lara Jonah, a Chartered Forensic Psychologist and a national clinical lead for domestic abuse programmes in NPPS; Simon Pellew OBE, the outgoing CEO, who formerly led the prison charity Time for Families and founded the employment project PECAN; Charlotte Rendle, the former Deputy Governor at HMP Wormwood Scrubs and now a practising psychotherapist; Caspar Rose, CEO of Fresh Fitness Food and an experienced mentor of men leaving prison; Charles Trotman, who works in computing for the University of West London; and Dionne Trotman, a former BBC journalist.
