The European Offender Employment Forum is an independent membership body for all organisations working in the offender employment field. It was first established over 20 years ago and has run continuously since then in a variety of forms. It is currently managed and administered by the Centre for Economic & Social Inclusion in the UK.
The EOEF aims to:
- promote links between different employment providers across Europe
- lobby and advocate on offender employment issues
- provide a central information source for policy makers and providers.
EOEF members receive a range of services including:
- monthly bulletins on recent European developments in the ex-offender employment field,
- discount at the annual international conference
- access to information and advice on potential sources of funding
- links to potential transnational partners working in a similar field
- free use of the website to promote and advertise events, and facilitate discussion
- online listing on a members index, accessible to all site users.
In recent years the main work of the forum partners has been concentrated on gaining a greater understanding from across the EU of the common factors which help offender employment projects succeed A European Commission funded project ‘What works for offenders’ undertaken by the EOEF:
- Considered information from over 100 offender employment programmes across the EU
- Heard representations from over 40 organisations delivering offender employment programmes
- Shared information and experiences with over 200 experts in this field who attended seminars during the lifetime of the project.
The final report noted among its conclusions that:‘It is of primary importance for agencies, funders and project providers across the European Union to build on the good practice that has been established and jointly focus on the development of an appropriate, robust infrastructure to enable programmes to be delivered effectively’.
It was a feature of many of the offender employment programmes studied that:
- The ability to develop and sustain projects is very sensitive to fluctuations in social policy priorities funding is often short-term
- The context in which employment programmes are developed varies enormously across the European Union
- There is very little evaluated evidence of good practice to draw on
- There is still no systemic mechanism for sharing good practice within or between member states.
Nevertheless, the report did highlight a range of features which all participants considered to be critical to success:
- Adequate funding
- Effective management
- Qualified staff
- Effective partnerships
- An individualised approach.
In a subsequent European Commission funded project 'Making it work for offenders' the EOEF partners then developed a resource in the form of a toolkit that would assist the development of effective offender employment projects.
The EOEF is currently being reviewed and will be relaunched at an international event on October this year.
Copies of reports and further information about EOEF can be found on the website www.eoef.org
