Confidence
Before anything else, a person has to believe the door is open to them. We start with identity, self-worth and the practical business of being heard. It is the part most providers skip and the part everything else depends on.
Anabranch Plus
Leaving the main channel is not leaving the river
We are a justice sector specialist in rehabilitation and employment support. We work with people in prisons, young offenders, on probation, in classrooms and in workplaces, to help them find the course that carries them back. Most of the people who deliver our programmes have made that journey themselves.
Start here
Why we are called Anabranch
An anabranch is a channel that leaves the main river, runs its own course and rejoins it further downstream.
Contact with the justice system takes a person out of the main current, away from work, opportunity and from the people and places that once held them steady. But leaving the main channel is not leaving the river. It is the same body, still moving and headed to reconnect.
Our job is to support people to find the course back and to make sure there is something real waiting when they get there.
Confidence, capability, then opportunity
Most employability provision starts at the wrong end. It hands a CV to someone who does not yet believe they are employable, or a job to someone with no way of sustaining it. We built our model in the order change actually happens.
Capability
Skills, qualifications, digital literacy and the language of work. Delivered by subject specialists across enterprise, digital, logistics, STEAM and finance, alongside mentors trained to Association of Business Mentors standards.
Opportunity
A programme is only as good as what someone can walk into at the end of it. Every participant is offered a confirmed next step: a referral to an employer, a training provider or an academic route.
The messenger matters as much as the message
A message lands when the person delivering it has walked the same road. Around every programme sits a wider network, including mental health support from South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, innovation partners, and literacy organisations that help people who find reading hard.
Some of our team bring lived experience of the criminal justice system. They are not there to observe and are not brought in to give a testimony at the end of a session. They co-facilitate, they lead and they are paid professionals.
We also have a wraparound support network that comprises adult social workers, SEND and literacy specialists and trauma-informed facilitators.
Five programmes and four workshop strands
Five programmes and four workshop strands, matched to sentence stage, release timeline and setting. Full detail is available on the programmes page.
Foundation Programme
The entry point. Participants identify the strengths and skills they already hold, including those built outside formal education and inside custody and align them to real job roles. All leave with a referral into work, training or further support.
Empowerment to Employment
Industry-focused programmes that support prison leavers and/or people experiencing long-term unemployment back into work through sector-specific learning and referrals in logistics, engineering, digital and AI and entry-level roles.
Empower Her Future
Gender-responsive support for women affected by the justice system. It can be any of our programmes and workshops, adapted for the women we support and delivered by professional practitioners and people with lived experience. It runs from a three-day Foundation to a three-month programme, where it adds expert, industry-focused and clinical wraparound support. Longer programmes allow deeper support and greater impact.
Where I Fit
Cultural capital, delivered by going there. Participants visit professional and institutional settings, then build a personalised pathway into employment, education or enterprise.
Working for Yourself
A 12-week programme covering self-employment suitability, licence conditions and sustainable-employment support for people who want to work for themselves.
Workshops
Standalone sessions and short series across self-development, employment, digital skills and employer awareness. Available in custody, community and workplace settings.
How we work with you
1
You brief us
Tell us the cohort, the setting, the outcome you need and the contract it sits in.
2
We shape it
We recommend a programme and a length, adapt the content, and agree the referral routes and measures with you.
3
We deliver
Every session is co-facilitated by a trained peer mentor and a professional practitioner, with mentoring touchpoints and wraparound support where it is needed.
4
We report
You receive confidence measures from the start and end of the programme, referral and progression information, and a report mapped to what you need to evidence.
We count what changed, not what was delivered
More than 100 people have taken part in our programmes in prisons and in the community since 2025.
Learning hours tell a commissioner almost nothing. We report on confirmed referrals, sustained engagement, qualifications achieved and progression at set points after release and agree what we are counting before delivery starts, not after.
The Anabranch Social Value Index is our own measurement framework. It sits alongside the National TOMs rather than competing with them, capturing shifts in confidence, agency and readiness that come months before an employment outcome appears in anybody's data.
Who we work with
Government and public bodies
Prisons, young offender institutions, probation regions, police and crime commissioners, combined and local authorities, and departments commissioning employment and rehabilitation provision. Directly commissioned delivery, designed around your cohort, setting and reporting cycle.
Employers
Fair-chance recruitment that survives contact with a hiring manager. Mentor training for your own staff, workplace delivery, employability sessions run inside your business, and honest advice on the parts of your process that quietly screen people out.
Funders and foundations
Grant and philanthropic funding lets us reach people no contract currently covers; upstream work with young people at risk, provision for cohorts that fall between commissioning lines and support after a programme formally ends. We report against the Anabranch Social Value Index and will show you the data whether or not it flatters us.
Primes, suppliers and social value
If you hold or are bidding for a public contract with a social value commitment, we help you write commitments that are specific and deliverable, then deliver them, so what you promised and what happens are the same thing. From 1 January 2027, PPN 026 scores social value on central government contracts of £1m and above around two outcomes; good jobs and skills.
How we map to PPN 026We also work with schools and alternative provision on upstream prevention and with health, research and innovation partners who need lived experience built into design rather than consulted at the end.
Working alongside
We are proud to work alongside organisations committed to meaningful change.
Get in touch
Tell us what you are trying to achieve and who you are trying to reach and we will come back to you.