About us

Changing Paths is a Community Interest Company and Charitable Trust, an initiative that has been set up by the Wates Family through the Wates Giving charity programme. Changing Paths assists offenders and others into sustainable employment within the construction sector and its supply chain.
We aim to place offenders and ex-offenders, the usually socially excluded sectors of society, into skilled, sustainable and paid employment. This can only be done by providing correct, constructive and comprehensive training programs, which we aim to deliver with sufficient funding.
Changing Paths have sourced the best training packages, along with a daily growing partner base willing to take on our graduates.
Access to employment is one of the major factors determining whether an offender will re-offend or not on release. Changing Paths has been set up to meet this need by providing the ex-offender with the knowledge and skills training to set them on the pathway to employment in the construction industry and its supply chains. The intention is that Changing Paths will establish itself as a route of choice out of re-offending for those in the prison population with a genuine desire to change their life prospects on release.

Why it is important to make a difference

It costs the taxpayer in the region of £150,000 to build every prison cell and between £38,000 and £41,000 each year – rising to as much as £178,000 for a secure training centre – to keep an offender incarcerated. These figures do not include transport costs to and from prison or the costs associated with courts, appeals or other criminal justice sector infrastructure. However, Ministry of Justice figures indicate that 58% of adult male prisoners and 70%+ of young adults re-offend within two years of release, while the England & Wates prison population is forecast to rise to 100,000 by 2012.

Practice shows that securing employment at the earliest possible opportunity is one of the biggest incentives not to re-offend, but for many offenders this is not an option as they have low levels of educational attainment and few if any skills. This said skills training backed by appropriate levels of literacy and numeracy education are insufficient in themselves to act as an incentive to an offender on release not to re-offend. Training for employment devalues the commitment to the training if a path to employment is not part of the overall formula along with through the gate support for related issues such as accommodation, setting up bank accounts, obtaining National Insurance numbers and other seemingly easy tasks.

Changing Paths aims to provide through its commercial and charitable partners a holistic package focused on skills training and gateways to employment to help offenders establish themselves once released. Changing Paths will have a number of identifiable outcomes for individual offenders, but will also have an effect on the cost to the prison service and the lack of skilled tradesmen in the construction industry. As fellow human beings we have a duty of care to help those in our communities whom have fallen, can we justify not doing all we can for those who are willing and committed to change.