News

Penrose Options, last week welcomed the Bedfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) Festus Akinbusoye as part of his planned visits to organisations that his office has funded this year.

The partnership between the PCC and Penrose is a first for our charity and supports the Community Action to Thrive and Enable (CATE) Project. Launched in April 2021, the CATE Project is a 12-month pilot to provide a specialist outreach service in Bedfordshire as part of a new trial by Bedfordshire PCC to provide drug and alcohol support as part of a Conditional Caution Pathway.

Project CATE will help bridge the current gap in providing much-needed access to existing provisions. It will enable engagement for a complex and extremely hard to reach group of vulnerable women and ensuring they remain engaged.

Our CEO, Gill Arukpe said: “We are thankful to the PCC for their support in providing us with this grant. It will allow us to make considerable positive change to people’s lives. This fund will enable us to work with our partners to provide practical interventions to assertively work with Bedfordshire women who are living with trauma. Due to this, they find themselves exposed to dangerous lifestyles and risk of committing crime or having crimes committed against them. Our aim is to prevent future crime by reducing recidivism by our work.”

The PCC is conducting these visits to engage with members of the public and partners.  He dedicates his diary once every week to community visits, which has proved to be very beneficial as it has aided his research for the development of the Police and Crime Plan.

The PCC and our CEO had a very useful discussion and hope to work together on other initiatives moving forward.