Rosie Brown, Co-CEO of COOK, appointed Chair of the National Oversight Board for Employment Advisory Boards (EABs).
Rosie Brown has been working to create employment opportunities for prison leavers for some time through COOK’s RAW Talent programme and as Chair for the EAB at HMP Wandsworth. Now, newly appointed as the Chair of the National Oversight Board, Rosie shares her vision for the future.
Rosie Brown has been working to create employment opportunities for prison leavers for some time through COOK’s RAW Talent programme and as Chair for the EAB at HMP Wandsworth. Now, newly appointed as the Chair of the National Oversight Board, Rosie shares her vision for the future.
I joined COOK to work with my brothers back in 2000 and have been building a business with them ever since. Like many family businesses, we wanted to have a positive impact, and over a decade ago we started actively employing people who face barriers when looking for jobs through our RAW Talent scheme.
RAW stands for ‘ready and working’ and we support people into work who struggle to find a job due to a criminal conviction or time in prison, or face other obstacles like homelessness, addiction or mental ill-health.
Since we started RAW Talent in 2014, we have recruited nearly 150 people through the scheme, learning a huge amount along the way.
When James Timpson called back in 2022 and suggested the idea of the Employment Advisory Boards, it felt like a great opportunity to take our commercial experience and knowledge of working with prison leavers to have a positive impact.
Starting the EAB at HMP Wandsworth was challenging. Our goal was to build a Board supportive of the prison, having strong relationships with senior leadership, as well as the third sector already working in the prison.
We found some space to set up an Employment Hub where prisoners could go to find job opportunities or get support with applications, disclosures and CV writing, and connected the prison to external businesses and organisations with vacancies for prison leavers. We held events to raise profile and ultimately found a casework approach to be the most effective in driving positive outcomes.
Taking over as Chair of the National Oversight Board, I feel enormously excited at the potential for change when private, public and third sectors come together. A huge number of inspiring business leaders are uniting to give their time, energy and contacts to support helping more prison leavers into work. Change has already happened, more will follow.
My first priority is to build the team by making sure we have engaged Chairs in every prison, and a clear regional structure to help us coordinate and work better together.
Together, we’ll look to focus on building good relationships with the prisons, a casework approach, and have working groups to pursue specific opportunities to get more prison leavers into steady work such as Release on Temporary License (ROTL) and working with the third sector.
There’s lots of exciting initiatives on the horizon which we’ll be supporting New Futures Network with, including more bespoke training for Prison Employment Leads and a new digital jobs board (watch out for next month’s blog on this!).
The EABs have enormous commercial experience, talent and passion for supporting prison leavers into employment, and I’m excited to see what is possible.
By Rosie Cook, Co-CEO of COOK and Chair of the National Oversight Board for Employment Advisory Boards