Case Study

A chain reaction

10 Dec 2024

Harnessing the expertise of specialist and local partners is a mainstay of Ingeus’s drive to enhance its services and boost outcomes for its participants. We work in partnership with private, public and third sector organisations across the UK, some of which are small local enterprises, venturing into unchartered waters to partner with Ingeus.

So how do these smaller organisations fare in the tumultuous world of large-scale contracting? Here we turn the tables to discover how working with Ingeus has benefited Midlands-based charity, The Recovery Foundation.

When the Recovery Foundation was invited to pilot its peer-led mental health groups to people on probation in Birmingham, it could never have anticipated the opportunities which have since arisen. Promptly invited to successfully bid alongside Ingeus for the Ministry of Justice’s Dependency and Recovery services in early 2022, stepping into the criminal justice sector with a prime contractor of government services like Ingeus was new ground for the charity’s CEO, Emma Sithole.

“My concern potentially going to work with a global organisation like Ingeus was that we’d be a tiny fish in a massive pond,” recalls Emma. “Would we be out of our depth, having to do everything demanded of us, or would it be a genuine partnership?

“We’ve never put a large-scale tender together before so Ingeus did the heavy lifting but in all other ways it’s been a completely equal partnership from the start. There’s always been a feeling of ‘we can do this together’.
It’s never felt overwhelming or too much of a challenge because of how supported we feel by Ingeus.”

Subsequently winning contracts in Durham, Northumbria, Cleveland and North and West Yorkshire, the partners headed North, quickly mobilising The Recovery Foundations expert team.

“Our staff are based in the Midlands and London, so the early logistics of delivering in the North East were challenging, but even then, Ingeus made things smoother,” Emma continues. “They encouraged travelling a day in advance to get settled on site and set up advance online meetings so we knew each other before physically meeting on the day. I had a million questions and they were all answered, encouraged even.”

The Recovery Foundation has since delivered its Hope and Recovery four-session intervention to almost 50 Ingeus staff members, who in turn will be trained to deliver the mental health recovery programme to service users.

Its services have also been in demand from other areas of Ingeus’s Justice team. Emma has been ‘blown away’ by pickup of its highly specialised training on specific areas of mental health by colleagues in the Ingeus Personal Wellbeing teams across Birmingham, Leeds, Leicester and Durham. They have been ‘kept very busy’!

This income growth has supported the retention of three highly qualified staff members, allowing their expertise to remain within The Recovery Foundation. Yet the benefits of working with Ingeus lay way beyond the day-to-day delivery of services:

“Ingeus has given us a solid foundation from which to grow,” Emma continues. “This contract has seen us put together additional policies and HR procedures, to those already in place, creating a robust framework for the future that can only benefit us in the long run.

“It’s also given us confidence that we’ve done this well and so can do it again. We’ve been given access to a new sector, new geographical areas, new ways of working, all of which we can now demonstrate to other commissioners. We would never have pursued a tender of this scale without Ingeus’s belief, encouragement and backing. They embraced us as a small organisation and all my little fish, massive pond worries have never been an issue.”

Away from work, the teams are keen to develop their positive relationship…

“The Ingeus area manager always arranges for us to have dinner together one evening when we’re on site in the north. It’s a great way to get to know each other in a more informal way and we feel totally comfortable hanging out together."

“I honestly have nothing but good things to say about working with Ingeus.”

If you’re a local services provider interested in supporting Ingeus mission to Enable Better Lives, find out more about working with us.